CHAPTER VI - Welcome to AJC Archives · "1 CHAPTER VI 1. Treitschke's political development epitomized the trend of German polit-ical liberalism. Anti-Bismarckian in the constitutional

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CHAPTER VI

1. Treitschke's political development epitomized the trend of German polit-ical liberalism. Anti-Bismarckian in the constitutional conflict of the 1860's,Treitschke was won over, like so many Liberals with whom he joined inthe National Liberty Party, by the success of Bismarck's military solutionof the Prussian-German national question.

Of the extensive literature on Treitschke two studies are particularlyrelevant for our problem. For the sociological implications of Treitschke'santi-Semitism see Rosenberg, Arthur: "Treitscbke und die Juden. ZurSoziologie der deutschen akademischen Reaktion," Die Gesellschaft (Ber-lin, 1930), vol. II, pp. 78 if. A psychological interpretation of the SaxonianTreitschke's Prussia-cult is given in Wolfgang Hailgarten's study on"Fremde' al Schopfer völkischer Lehren" (" 'Aliens' as creators of racialdoctrines"). (Unpublished manuscript in the possession of the Instituteof Social Research, New York.)

2. Treitschke, Heinrich von: "Em Wort über unser Judentum," PreussischeJahrbücher, vols. 44 and 45, 1879, Separatabdruck, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1880),p. 4.

3. On occasion, however, Stoecker did side with the racial anti-Semites whowanted the emancipation law revoked. How ill-at-ease he was in theircompany became apparent at the time of the "Anti-Semites' Petition."Liberal opponents in parliament questioned Stoecker as to whether hehad signed the petition. He first denied it and, then, when shown hisname among the signers, went into an excited "explanation" which con-vinced no one and damaged his reputation.

4. Speech of March 4, 1881, Christlich Sozial, bc. cit., p. 113.5. Speech of December 3, 1880, op. cit., p. 106.6. Marr, Wilhelm: Streifzuge eines philosophischeri Touristen (Berlin, 1876);

quoted from Antisemiten-Spiegel, bc. cit., p. 188.7. Oertzen, Dietrich von: Op. cit., pp. 153 if.

After it had become clear that "Jew-baiting" could arouse turnul-tuous applause at every popular meeting, a multitude of "wild"orators appeared overnight who, without having any of Stoecker'smoral pathos, were only interested in getting applause and entertain-ing the audience with jokes. Stoecker always was anxious to keepthese elements out of the Christian Social Party. But they remainedan embarrassment since each election campaign brought togetherand mixed up all the groups of the right.

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NOTES AND REFERENCES 233

Oertzen found comfort in the thought that a 'just fight had to be wagedeven at the risk of its lofty motives being misunderstood and perverted.

As little as Luther could refrain from bringing about the reforma-lion because the Christian freedom he had in mind was taken byignorant people to mean the freedom of the flesh, so little couldStoecker refrain from attacking the immense power of evil personi-fied in modern Jewry, just because unscrupulous agitators couldappropriate the effective element of agitation inherent in "Jew-baiting" and were able to use it without moral considerations to stirup popular passion.

Christian-conservative efforts to stake off the boundary lines of "legit-imate" hatred of Jews and to decide on what was right and wrong inanti-Semitic agitation sometimes appear as plain insanity. A Protestantclergyman of the Stoecker school, reviewing a long list of anti-Semiticleaflets published by the racial school, wrote indignantly:

To reject are Nos. 1, 4—5, 13, 15, 17—20, 24, 28, 30, No. 32,especially 24. A conservative and Christian Social believer in theBible cannot recommend literature of this kind. Nobility and theclergy may smile in the security of a good conscience when they areinsinuatingly depicted as being anti-Semitic for selfish interests (asin No. 4); it might still be tolerated that the bad books of atheistanti-Semites are recommended (as in No. 5 and others) for very fewwill buy them; but that heathen religions are exalted at the expenseof the Revelation of the Old Testament (Nos. 28, 30, 32); that thetales of the Old Testament are treated as legend; that Abraham (withall Samaritans) is declared the servant of the devil (Nos. 20, 34);that the privileged position of the Jewish people, explicitly termedas undeserved in the Bible, is called "Jewish arrogance in the Bible"even before the rejection of Christ (No. 1); . . . that Schopenhauer'sjudgment on the "miserable Jew religion," as revealed in the Genesisand in all historical books of the Old Testament is approvinglyquoted (No. 17)—all this must arouse the indignation of everyChristian.

The incensed Protestant clergyman then recommends as "excellent,"and "for their special popularity," the remaining anti-Semitic leaflets.

(Quoted from Antisemiten-Spiegel, pp. 142—S.)8. Fritsch, Theodor: Antisemiten-Katechismus (Leipzig, 1893), pp. 11-47.9. Ibid., p. 27.

10. Ahlwardt, Hermann: Reichstag speech of February 27, 1895.11. J. Arthur de Gobineau's Essai sur rinegalite des races humaines, 4 vols.

(Paris, 1853—1855) is generally considered the first and most representa-tive attempt at a racial philosophy of history.

12. Barzun, Jacques: Race—A Study in Modern Superstition (New York,

1937), p. 201.13. Veblen, Thorstein: Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (New

York, 1918); Michels, Robert: Probleme der Sozialphilosophie (Leipzig,Berlin, 1914); Kehr, Eckart: Schlachtflottenbau und Parteipolitik (Berlin,

234 NOTES AND REFERENCES

1980); Rosenberg, Arthur: Die Entstehung der Deutschen Republik (Ber-un, 1930) are a few of the many studies of German society which stressits basic anomaly: industrialism without a ruling middle class.

14. "Eternal nature takes implacable revenge for violation of her command-ments. Thus I believe I am acting today in the spirit of the AlmightyCreator: by resisting the Jew I am fighting for the Lord's work." Hitler,Adolf: Op. cit., p. 74.

15. Fritsch, Theodor: Op. cit., pp. 358 if. The formulation of the "Ten GermanCommandments" with the deliberate imitation of scriptural language wasin itself a provocative blasphemy, designed to discredit Christian doctrineas having its origin in Judaism.

16. Mommsen, Theodor: Romische Geschichte, 3 vols., 6th ed., (Berlin, 1875),vol. III, p. 550.

17. This, of course, may vary according to countries as well as social groups.In a study on Anti-Semitism Within American Labor, which the Instituteof Social Research made during the war years, the charge of debaucheiywas relatively rare in the long list of alleged Jewish individual and socialmisdemeanors. On the whole, allusions to Jewish lewdness play a muchsmaller part in American anti-Semitic literature than they did in the writ-ings of German anti-Semites. In America, Negroes rather than Jews seemto be the objects of unconscious sex envy.

18. Ahlwardt, Hermann: Der Verzweiflungskampf der Arischen Volker mitdem Judentum (Berlin, 1890), p. 230.

19. Hitler, Adolf: Op. cit. (author's translation from the German edition of1936), p. 782.

20. In his articles in the periodical, Grenzboten, 1880, which Busch repub-lished as a pamphlet under the title Israel und die Go/im. See Wawrzinek,Kurt: Op. cit., p. 30.

21. Marr claimed that in the first year of its existence the League had at-tracted 6,000 members, a figure called "most unlikely" by Wawrzinek.(Op. cit., p. 33.)

22. Marr, Wilhelm: Der Sieg des Judentuims uber das Germanentum (Bern,1879), back cover.

23. According to Encyclopedia Judaica, article "Antisemitismus" (Berlin 1928).24. German anti-Semites pointed to the Chinese Exclusion Law, which the

Congress of the United States passed in 1882, as an example of soundracial policy. They cited the act in support of the demand that the Germanborders be closed to Jews. The freest commonwealth had demonstrated,Henrici wrote, that rights and liberties could stand being curtailed if thecommon interest so required. (Wawrzinek, Kurt: Op. cit., p. 44.)

25. Neue Deutsche Volkszeitung, no. 64, 1883.26. Boeckel's main support came from Oberhessen, a section notorious for the

poverty of its soil, lack of industry and cultural facilities. Jews living inthose parts made a living as cattle-dealers, innkeepers, mortgagers, aridmiddlemen. Judging by the low esteem in which they were held by otherGerman Jews, they shared in the cultural backwardness of their environ-ment.


27. Gerlach, Heilmut von: Von Rechts nach Links, bc. cit., pp. 170—171.

28. Boeckel, Otto: Die Juden—die Konige unserer Zeit (Berlin, 8th ed.,1887), p. 8. The title of this 15-page pamphlet seems to have been in-spired by the French monarchist, A. Toussenel, who in 1845 had written:"Les juifs, rois de l'epoque." Total circulation of Boeckel's pamphlet al-legedly reached 1,500,000 copies. (Cf. Introduction to enlarged pamphletof the same title, Berlin, 1901.)

29. Quoted from Frank, Walter: Op. cit., p. 229.80. Antisemitische Korrespondenz, no. 69, December 8, 1889.81. Breakdown of figures from Antisemiten-Spiegel, pp. 29-30.32. July 27, 1890. Cf. Antisemiten-Spiegel, p. 27.83. Harden, Maximilian: "Fjjrst Bismarck und der Antisemitismus," Die

Zukunft, April 29, 1893, P. 200.84. Ahlwardt, Hermann: Der Verzweiflungskampf der Arischen Vöbker mit

dem Judentum, bc. cit., pp. 64—164.85. Ahlwardt, Hermann: Judenflinten, 5th ed. (Dresden, 1892).86. Neuc Zeit, 1891—92, no. 84, p. 228.37. Under the dateline of May 29, 1892, signed by the Minister of War.88. The affair of Ahlwardt's "Jewish Rifles" might remind the reader of the

investigation of the Garsson combine by a Congressional Committee. At-tempts were made to inject into the American investigation the chargethat the firm had delivered defective shells causing the death of Americansoldiers; but the Committee's findings quickly silenced the accusers andthe whole issue hardly created a ripple on the surface of public opinion.

89. Mehring, Franz: "Berliner Geschichten," Neue Zeit, 189 1—92, no. 84,

p. 229.40. In the first balloting Ahlwardt obtained twice as many votes as were

cast for the Conservative candidate. The Conservative Party then with-drew its man and threw its support to Ahlwardt in the run-off elections.

41. Cerlach, Hellmut von: Von Rechts nach Links, bc. cit., pp. 113—114.

42. Reickstag speech of February 27, 1895.48. Boeckel, Otto: Op. cit., p. 6.44. The Centralverein deutscher Staatsburger judischen Glauberis was founded

in 1893 in Berlin to defend the civil and social rights of German Jews

regardless of the members' religious or political affiliation. Opposed toZionism, the Centralverein was devoted to a policy of national assimilation

of German Jews. Its "Legal Department" (Rechts-Koinmission) had thetask of bringing suit against anti-Semitic violators of the law.

45. Buch, Willi: 50 Jahre antisemitirche Bewegung. Beitrage zu ihrer Ge-schichie (Munich, 1937), p. 49.

46. In present-day American anti-Semitic agitation a similar attempt may beobserved. The Jews, so the agitators claim, are the ones who constantlytalk about democracy because they can hide behind and abuse the safe-guards of democratic government. The Jews are "the parasites of democ-racy." The goal, of course, is to compromise and pervert the very idea ofdemocracy by making it appear as a Jewish sanctuary.

CHAPTER VII

1. Bahr, Hermann: Des Antisemitismus. Em Internationales Interview (Ber-un, 1894), pp. 2 if. Writer, editor, literary and art critic, Hermann Bahr,born in Linz (Austria) in 1863, was in his youth a Socialist. In 1886 hewrote in answer to Albert Schäifle's Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozial..demokratie (1885) a pamphlet, Die Emnsichtslosigkeit des Herrn Schaflie.Later he moved away from socialism, first towards idealistic anarchism,finally to Catholicism. In 1912 he announced his conversion to the Catho-lie faith.

2. The notion that political anti-Semitism of the eighties and nineties wasthe product of the agrarian movement was expressed with particular con-viction by a group of writers contributing to Friedrich Naumann's year-books Patria. Cf. Max Nitzche's analysis of "Die Anfange der agrarischenBewegtmg in Deutsehiand," Patria! (Berlin, 1905).

3. From 1887 on, when Otto Boeckel won a Reichstag seat as the first anti-Semitic candidate, until World War I approximately 70 men were electedto the Reichstag as candidates of overtly anti-Semitic parties, the Con-servatives not included. (The number cannot be accurately determinedbecause of changes in party affiliations after the elections.) All Reichstagmembers were requested to give some autobiographical information to berecorded in the official Reichstag reference books. On the basis of thisinformation (Reichstagshandbucher for the legislative periods of 1887,1890, 1893, 1898, 1903, 1907, 1912—1918), which is neither completenor too specific, a few general observations may be made.

Of the anti-Semitic members who professed a religious denomination,all but two were of the Protestant faith. One of these two was a dissidentCatholic (Alt-Katholik), the other is listed as a Mennonite. ProfessingCatholics, it can be seen, were conspicuously absent. In terms of socialbackground, three major social groups were not or hardly represented.None of the members came from the ranks of industrial labor. With theexception of two, Liebermann von Sonnenberg and Count Ludwig vonReventlow, the aristocracy was ostensibly missing. Of these two aristocratsone (Reventlow) was a lawyer who had once been a Rittergutsbesitzer,the other (Liebermann) a debt-ridden ex-officer. Although the groupcomprised men who declared themselves to be merchants and Sons ofmerchants, not one of them came from, or represented, big industry, trade,and finance. Next to small industrial and agricultural entrepreneurs, ar-tisans, and small merchants, the group counted among its membersteachers, lawyers, civil servants, and employees.

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The group's educational level was above average. Of the 43 men forwhom educatiOnal data are available, 19 had a university backgroundand only 13 did not have more formal education than high school; theremainder had gone to college or its educational equivalent in special artschools, trade schools, etc. The proportion of men with an academicbackground and holding public office increased somewhat in later years.

A sizeable number of the anti-Semitic Reichstag group did not followtheir original training and profession, even if allowance is made forchanges resulting from their parliamentary activities. Seven switched topositions in municipal government, thirteen became writers and editors.

As to racist agitators in general, non-Jewish defense literature rightlyemphasized their bad records as citizens, their collisions with the law,their lack of Christian devotion and social respectability. Many of themwere men of "personal irnprobity and mental aberrations." (Baron, SaloW.: A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 3 vols., New York, 1937,vol. II, p. 296.)

4. The lives of many German anti-Semites offer material for the study ofnationalism as an ideology of frustration. Recently, a report on the mood ofGerman students contained a striking illustration. A Heidelberg studentwas quoted as saying "first, that most of the students are still nationalistic,and second, that ninety per cent of them would leave Germany if theyhad a chance to emigrate." (Anne O'Hare McCormick "Abroad," NewYork Times, January 27, 1947.)

The commentator missed the point when she concluded that "the twostatements are not exactly consistent" and suggested that this should beattributed to the prevailing confusion.

5. Dr. Jungfer, Dr. Bernhard Förster, and Dr. Henrici were fired for theiragitation by Berlin's liberal Lord Mayor Max von Forckenbeck whoinitiated a "Counter-Declaration" to fight the Anti-Semites' Petition.

6. The defense literature of the period interchangeably uses the three terms—racial, radical, and rowdy anti-Semitism—to distinguish it from Chris-tian Social anti-Semitism.

7. Caprivi's speech of December 7, 1893. Steno graphischer Reichstagsberichtof same date.

8. Quoted from Vorwärts, December 22, 1894.9. The Nazi program of 1920 called for "the enactment of a law to expro-

priate land without indemnity in the interest of the common welfare."

Such land was to be found primarily in the eastern provinces, and theGerman "land reform movement" had been traditionally anti-Junker.To counteract the unfavorable reaction of big agrarian interests, theNazis "explained":

"In the light of the mendacious interpretations to which our enemiessubject the Program of the N.S.D.A.P. the following statement is neces-

sary: Since the N.S.D.A.P. recognizes the principle of private property,it is self-evident that the phrase, 'expropriate without indemnity' canrefer only to the establishment of legal provisions for the expropriation,


if necessary, of land riot lawfully acquired [by its present owners] or notmanaged in the interests of the commonweal. This, therefore, is directedprimarily against Jewish land-speculating companies." (The Nazi state-ment appeared in the conservative Deutsche Zeitung of April 13, 1928.)

10. Dubnow, Simon: Op. cit., vol. III, p. 447.11. The full title of the "Semi-Gotha" is Weimarer historisch-geneak'gisches

Taschenbuch des gesamten Adth jehudaischeri Ursprungs. (Weimar his-torico-genealogical pocket reference book of all nobility of Jehudaicorigin.) In title and make-up the Semi-Gotha imitated the GothaischeGenealogische Taschenbucher, the Who's WTho of European aristocracy.The first edition (Weimar, 1912) was confiscated but in 1913 the con-fiscation was revoked with the result that the remaining copies sold ata premium. A second edition of 1,009 pages was published in Munichin 1913.

As a document of the racial mind the following advertisement in thesecond edition deserves quotation. It appeared under the sign of theswastika:

"We have an opening for a co-editor qualified in every respect; of up-right character, conversant with genealogy, race history, and the Gotha;conscientious, careful, of military punctuality, reliability and correctness;circumspect, interested and energetic, with firm, clear and small hand-writing and precise style; reserve officer preferred; first trial period,then life position."

12. Oertzen: Op. cit., p. 197.13. Frank, Walter: Op. cit., p. 240.14. Elbogen, Ismar: Op. cit., p. 165, writes: "The principal sufferers from

these activities were the middle-class Jews in the towns and villages.They were unable to maintain their position arid were forced to migrateto the larger cities where they surrendered their economic independenceand swelled the ranks of the proletariat."

Such an interpretation ignores the other relevant causes of the trendtoward urbanization which was neither typically German nor confined toJews. To state that the German Jews who went to the larger cities "swelledthe ranks of the proletariat," is apt to create an entirely wrong impression.In contrast to the United States, Germany had practically no Jewishworking class. As a rule, Jews who went to the cities continued to remainoutside the proletariat.

CHAPTER VIII

1. The historian Ismar Elbogen (A Century of Jewish Life, bc. cit., p. 166)writes about the years:

"The feverish heat of political passion cooled gradually. The Ger-man people turned to fortifying its position in world politics, and theJewish problem retired into the background."

Heilmut von Gerlach calls the year 1893 the "parliamentary zenith" ofGerman anti-Semitism, "just as 1880 had been its spiritual one. From thenon it rapidly went downhill." ("Vom deutschen Antisemitismus," bc. cit.,pp. 154—155.) Dubnow's chapter on "Anti-Semitism in Germany" ends bymentioning the ritual murder affair at Konitz (1900). (op. cit., III, p.445.) All reference and historical works on German anti-Semitism devoteless space to the period of 1896—1914 than to the preceding twenty years.

This is true also for such representative periodicals as Preussische Jahr-bücher; Historisch-politische Blotter für das katholische Deutschband; Pro-testantische Kirchenzeitung für das evangelische Deutschland; Neue Zeit.

2. Buch, Will: Op. cit., p. 59.3. Ibid., p. 53.4. Cf. "Antisemitismus," Encyclopedia Judaica (Berlin, 1928).5. Buch, Will: Op. cit., p. 22. The passage referring to Boeckel's later life

reads:

The loss of his Reichstag seat was especially hard for Dr. Boeckel,since the Reichstag of 1903, for the rst time in the histoiy of Ger-man parliamentarism, paid the deputies a salary. And Dr. Boeckel,in dire economic straights because of unfortunate family affairs aswell as the decline of the anti-Semitic movement had to giveup the hope of thus earning a modest livelihood. . . . Although Dr.Boeckel had made noteworthy contributions in the field of folkloreand folk songs, the press ignored his books. Finally he withdrewfrom political life, entirely impoverished, bitter, and shy. In Michen-dorf in the March [of Brandenburg] he owned a modest littlehouse where he lived Like a recluse with an old housekeeper. In1910—12 he tried once more to become active and organized somecourses in public speaking. However, this too failed. During theseyears in Berlin, when one chanced to meet him, it was hard to recog-nize in this shabbily dressed old man, who often was dirty and with-out a collar, the once keen librarian of Marburg, the man of therapier-sharp tongue and pen. It must be gratefully acknowledgedthat the Agrarian League had set aside a small grant for him, despite

239


the fact that Boeckel often disagreed politically with the League.{Boeckel had in fact attacked the Agrarian League as a tool ofJunker reaction.}

The peasants of Michendorf considered Boeckel a queer old man.I had a pathetic experience. A group of Berlin Jungdeutsche [Young..Germans, an anti-Semitic youth organizationi which had been hikingthrough Michendorf, remembered the old leader. We took up posi-tions on the dark village street in front of his house ana sangSchenkendorf's lied of faith (Treuelied). He thanked us from awindow. But he refused even the request of myself, who had gainedmy first journalistic honors under his tutelage . . . to spend anhour with us. In the village inn we later struck up a conversationwith the peasants: "The doctor, well, he is a funny bird. Once ina while he makes a speech here in the veterans' league. For aTales. But he does not take the money himself. It must be sentto him by money order."

We meditated in silence. A man before whom all the Jewry ofthe Reich had once trembled, who had been a thorn in the sideof the comfortable gentlemen in parliament, to whom the nationalmovement in general was so heavily indebted, had to humiliatehimself before the villagers of the March.

6. The anti-Semitic parties had shaken off Ahlwardt at the very beginningof his political career. As early as November 28, 1891, Boeekel as chair-man of the Anti-Semitic People's Party, and Liebermann von Sonnenbergas chairman of the German Social Anti-Semitic Party, published the fol-lowing statement:

Upon several inquiries by party comrades the undersigned feelobliged to state that they cannot take any responsibility for thebehavior and the public agitation of Herr Rektor Ahlwardt and thatE{ektor Ahlwardt does not belong to any of the two party organiza-tions.

The 1898 edition of Fritsch's Antisemiten-Katechismus devoted severalpages (pp. 841—344) to an unfriendly appraisal of Ahlwardt's role in theanti-Semitic movement and accused him of recklessness and megalomania.

7. Cf. "Hermann Ahlwardt," Yevreyskaya Entzyklopediya (St. Petersburg),vol. 2., p. 123.

8. Buch, Willi: Op. cit., p. 16.9. According to Encyclepedia Judaica (Berlin, 1928), pp. 1022 if.

10. Gerlach, Hellmut von: Von Rechts nach Links, bc. cit., p. 114.11. Wawrzinek, Kurt: Op. cit., p. 46.12. "Liebermann von Sonnenberg, Zimmerman, Dr. Boeckel, Paul Förster,

Ahlwardt, Kähler, etc., were really as many parties in their own rights.The one was pro-Mittelstand, the other a friend of labor, a third an aristo-crat, the next a democrat. The one called for a fight against the Jews andJunkers, the other supported the big agrarians, rain or shine. The Reichs-tag group split over each vote. It did not introduce a single bill ofimportance, especially in the field that had been the basis of their

NOTES KND REFERENCES 241

agitation: the Jewish question. It soon became obvious within the groupthat it could not present an anti-Jewish bill because it could not agreeupon the concept of 'Jew.' They all concurred in one thing:

'Was er glaubt ist einerlei;In der Rasse liegt die Schweinerei.'

• • . . But how to define by law the concept of race Since the ques-flon could not be solved as to who was a Jew, they [anti-Semites] con-tinued to attack the Jews but could not legislate against them." (Gerlach:Op. cit., pp. 112 if.)

13. Cf. Oberwinder, Heinrich: "Das Stoeckerblatt," Die Zukunft (June 25,1896); Leuss, Hans: Wilhelm Freiherr von Hammerstein (Berlin, 1905),pp. 108 if.; Gerlach, Heilmut von: Von Rechts nach Links, bc. cit., pp.133 if.

14. See Mehring, Franz: Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, bc.cit., vol. IV, pp. 301 if.

15. Gerlach, Heilmut von: Von Rechts nach Links, Foe. cit., p. 118.16. Leuss, Hans: "Das Verbrechen als sozial-pathologische Erscheinung,"

Neue Zeit (1899—1900), vol. XVIII, No. i, pp. 213 if. "Disziplin inStrafanstalten," Neue Zeit, vol. XVIII, No. i. pp. 783 if; 820 if.

17. Adolf Harnack (ennobled in 1914), professor of ecclesiastic history atthe Berlin University; from 1905—21 director of the Prussian State Library;from 1910 President of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesdll.schaft zur Forderung derWissenschaf-ten; an eminent scholar and prolific writer. From 1903—1912,ilarnack was President of the Protestant Social Congress.

18. Weber, Ludwig: "Stoecker und Naumann," Die Zukunft, 1895, vol. XI,p. 418.

19. Roon's statement in Kreuzzeitung of January 31, 1896. Cf. Frank, W.:Op. cit., pp. 251 if.

20. From Naumann's letters in Stoecker's estate; quoted by Frank: Ibid.21. The Martineum was a private Protestant school in Schleswig-Holstein

which the Prussian Ministry of Worship and Instruction refused to recog-nize as a Gymnasium.

22. Harnack (see Note 17) was attacked by conservative Protestant orthodoxyfor the liberal philosophy of his works on church history. Stoecker him-self wrote an anonymous article against him in the Kreuzzeitung (August22, 1888).

23. The Social Democrat Hasenclever, elected in the sixth Berlin district in1887, had become incurably ill. In order to capture the district in thenecessary by-election, Bismarck's mouthpiece, the Norddeutsche Ailge-meine Zeitung, had suggested a coalition of all anti-Social Democraticforces. But the Progressives as well as the anti-Semites balked. Stoecker'spessimism as to the outcome of the by-election proved justified. The SocialDemocrats retained the district by a large majority.

24. The whole letter is reproduced in Frank, W.: Op. cit., pp. 318 if.


25. Sunday after Sunday this impudent liarProfanes God's House,We see him administer the Holy SacramentAnd no one throws the scoundrel out.

(Kladderadatsch, November 10, 1895.)

26. Neue Evangelische Kirchcnzeitung, February 1896.27. Oertzen: Op. cit., p. 878.28. According to the report of Das Volk, February 8, 1896. Quoted by

Oertzen: Op. cit., p. 383.29. Reichsbote, January 5, 1898. Cf. Oertzen: Op. cit., pp. 492 if.30. Stoecker's letter to the Protestant minister Braun. Quoted from Oertzen:

Op. cit., p. 397.31. The Kaiser's telegram of February 28, 1896, to Geheimrat Hinzpeter. It

was "by Imperial order" conveyed to Baron von Stumm. Stumm, with theKaiser's approval, published it in his newspaper Die Post, May 5, 1896.

82. Quoted from Frank: Op. cit., pp. 267 if. Frank quotes from an undatedletter by Stoecker to his wife which he assumes to have been written inreaction to the decree: "The answer of the Protestant Church's SuperiorCouncil to Stumm is shameless and dishonorable, a clanking chain on theleg of the State church. Where are we heading?"

33. Krause (Zum Austritt Stoeckers) disclosed that Stoecker had been willingto give in camera a binding promise that he would break with the leftwing of the Christian Social Party, grouped around Das Volk; but thathe had refused to do so openly for reasons of political expediency. Krausefurther cast aspersion on Stoecker's integrity by referring to the latter'sattempt to save Hammerstein despite the immorality of his conduct.

84. Mehring, Franz: "Der Fall Hammerstein," Neue Zeit (1895—96), vol.XIV, No. i, pp. 2 if.

CHAPTER IX

1. Stiinim won in the newly created election district of Ottweiler the industrialcenter of which, Neunkirchen, was the seat of his largest steel works.

2. Before the Catholic Center Party was organized and the Kulturkampfbrought the Free-Conservatives in conflict with political Catholicism, theCatholic element within the Free-Conservative Party was considerable.Among others, Carl Friedrich von Savigny, one of the founders of theCenter Party, originally belonged to the Free-Conservatives. The CenterParty later succeeded in conquering many Free-Conservative districts,especially in the Rhineland, and thereby modified the heavy-industrialcharacter of the party.

8. Quoted from Hellwig, Fritz: Carl Ferdinand Freiherr von Stumm-Halberg(Heidelberg-Saarbrucken, 1936), pp. 238 if.

4. Ibid., p. 441.5. Ibid., p. 492.6. Ziekursch, Johannes: Das Zeitalter Wilhelms II., bc. cit., p. 57.7. Die Reden des Freiherrn Carl Ferdinand von Stumm-Halberg, ed. by A.

Tile, 12 vols. (Berlin, 1906—1915), vol. VIII, p. 463.8. When Adolph Wagner dared to speak against Stumm in the Reichstag

debate on the sedition bill, Stumm challenged him to a duel. See Wagner,Adolph: Mein Konflikt mit dem Freiherrn von Stumm-Halberg (Berlin,1895). In a Phillipic against the "socialism of the pulpit, the chair and thestreet" (April 12, 1896) Stumm abused Protestant ministers of the Saarwho sympathized with the Stoecker movement, and Stoecker himself, tothe point where Stoecker had to sue him ior libel. Stumm had a steno-graphic record of his speech submitted to the Kaiser and made knownthrough the Neue Saarbrücker Zeitung (July 19, 1896) that the Kaiserhad approved of it "without reservation." Stoecker consequently also

sued the newspaper's editor for libel. In this trial Stumm was called as awitness. He announced that the Kaiser had authorized him to testify beforethe court. "Upon my inquiry as to whether the approval of His Majestyincluded also that part of my speech dealing with Stoecker, His Majestyreplied: 'Particularly so!'" Thereupon Stoecker withdrew the suit againstthe editor. But he won his case against Stumm who was sentenced forlibel. The court's decision amounted to a sentence against the Kaiserand cooled the friendship between Wilhelm II and Stumm.

9. Reactions against this solid opposition of the ruling groups to every kindof social critique were not lacking. After Stumm's attack on AdolphWagner, the faculty and students of the Berlin University honored their

243


professor by a demonstration in which even old Treitschke participated.Against Stumm's opposition, Wagner was in 1895 elected Rektor of theBerlin University. Two years later the same thing happened: Stumm'sdiatribe in the Prussian upper chamber against Katheder-socialism ingeneral and Professor Schmoller in particular assured Schmoller the annualrectorship of the Berlin University.

10. Prenssische Jahrbücher, vol. 82 (1895), p. 183.11. Furst Chiodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst: Denkwurdigkeiten der

Reichskanzlerzeit, ed. by Karl Alexander von Miller (Stuttgart—Berlin,1931), p. 63.

12. Briefe Wilhelms II. an den Zaren, ed. by Walter Goetz (Berlin, 1920),p.S.

13. The 1898 elections, however, failed to reestablish a Kartell majority inthe Reichstag. The Catholic Center Party and the Social Democrats, with102 and 56 seats respectively, returned in greater strength. Together withthe oppositional groups of the Poles, Alsatians, and Hanoverian Welfs, theCatholics and Social Democrats could in the new Reichstag frustrate allundesired legislation. It was essential to the government to preventCatholic-Socialist cooperation.

14. In colloquial German, "white collar worker" is Stehkragen-Prolet (starched-collar proletarian). It was the favorite epithet with which organized indus-trial labor ridiculed the aloofness of the salaried employees from thesocialist movement. Much more obvious symbols of social differentiationwere the hat and the cap.

15. See the outstanding study of Hans Speier: The Salaried Employee in Ger-man Society (New York, 1939, mimeographed).

16. The German National Federation of Salaried Commercial Employees, thePan-German League, and the Agrarian League were organized in the sameyear. They were part of the opposition against the policies of Caprivi andWilhelm II. The stunning Social Democratic victory at the polls had givena strong lift to the oppositional movement which was guided by the re-Stired Bismarck. The Hamburg group of employees set itself up in consciousopposition to the Social Democrats who had begun to agitate amongthe salaried employees. (Cf. Zimmerman, Albert: Der DeutschnationaleHandlungsgehilf en Verband (Hamburg, 1921), p. 8.

17. Anti-Semitic nationalism suspected the national loyalty of the Jewish groupon account of Jewish relations with the West. Before the Russian Octoberrevolution, German anti-Semitism rarely accused Jews of treacherous rela-tions with the East.

18. Lambach, Waither: Was wir sind; von Wesen und Art des Deutsch-nationalen Handlungsgehilfenbandes (Hamburg, 1926), p. 5.

19. Schack joined Liebermann von Sonnenberg's Reichstag group of çermanSocial Anti-Semites. Soon afterwards his career was ended by a criminalinvestigation and a jail sentence for moral turpitude.

20. Cf. Lederer, Emil, and Marschak, Jakob: Der Neue Mittelstand. Grundriss


der Sozialokonomik, 9. Abtg., 1 Tell (Tubingen, 1928. Transi. by E.Ellison, New York, 1937), p. 14.

21. In 1897, four years after the German National Federation, the CentralFederation of Commercial Employees (Centralverband der Hand1ungge-hilf en) was founded by the Jewish bookkeeper Max Josephson. The CentralFederation affiliated itself with the Social Democratic trade union move-ment. Most of its officers and members were Social Democrats. By 1911it had organized about 15,000 commercial employees as compared tothe German National Federation's 111,000. The sociologist Emil Lederer(Die Wirtschaftlichen Organisationen, Leipzig-Berlin, 1913, p. 62) sum-marized the essential differences between the two organizations as follows:

While the German National Federation of Salaried CommercialEmployees has particularly paid attention to, and considered ex-clusively effective, the mittelständi.sche element which is undoubtedlypresent in the employees' situation, the Central Federation hasstressed the proletarian element (coming from the occupation's lackof independence). This is the reason why the Central Federation issmall. It is [the result] not of its radical language but of thoseideological elements which interpret the employees' class situation asone-sidedly proletarian.

22. Buch, Will: Op. cit., p. 26.23. Giese, W.: Die Herren Raab und v. Liebermann in der deutschsozialen

Reformpartei (Berlin, 1901), pp. 108 if. Cf. Lange, Paul: "Der neueMittelstand," Neue Zeit, (1907), vol. XXV, 2, pp. 360—361.

24. Rosenberg, Arthur: "Treitscbke und die Juden. Zur Soziologie der deutschenakademischen Reaktion," Die Gesell.schaft (Berlin, 1930), vol. II, pp. 78 if.

25. Kehr, Eckart: "Zur Genesis des konigl.-preussischen Reserve Offiziers," Die

Gesells'chaft (Berlin, 1928), vol. II p. 495.26. Cf. Ziekursch, Johannes: Das Zeitalter Wilhelms II, toe. cit., p. 11. Zie-

kursch comments that "a man who held such an opinion and wondered whyGerman youths thought only of civil service careers to satisfy thefr ambi-

tion for leading positions in the state must have been devoid of the least

vestige of a political instinct."27. On the political transformation of the Prussian civil service see Puttkamer,

Albert von: (ed.) Staatsminister von Puttkamer. Em Stuck Preussischer

Vergangenheit 1828—1890 (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 80 if.

28. In his famous speech on "Science as a Vocation," Max Weber warned the

German students of the hazards which a teaching career entailed. "When

a young scholar comes to seek advice about habilitation, the responsibility

which one takes in advising him is heavy indeed. If he is a Jew, one

naturally tells him: lasciate ogni speranza." (Wissenschaft als Beruf,

Miinchen, 1919. Reprinted in Weber, Max: Gesammelte Aufsatze zur

Wi.ssenschaftslehre, Tubingen, 1922, pp. 524 if.).

29. Cf. Werner, Lothar: Der Alldeutsche Verband 1890—1918 (Historische

Studilen, Berlin, 1935, Heft 278), pp. 64—65.


30. Alfred Hugenberg in his address for Carl Peters. Cf. Bonhard, Otto:Geschichte des Alldeutschen Verbandes (Leipzig and Berlin, 1920), p.244.

31. Alldeutsche Blätter (Berlin) 1894, no. 1.32. Handbuch des Alldeutschen Verbandes für 1918 (Mainz), 22nd ed., p. 5.33. Hasse, Ernst: Deutsche Weltpolitik (München, 1897), vol. 1, Heft 4,

p. 46.34. Kuhlenbeck, Ludwig: Rasse und Volkstum (Mflnchen, 1905), p. 24.35. Alldeutsche Blatter, 1908, no. 38.36. Class, Heinrich: Wider den Strom, Vom Werden und Wachsen der na-

tionalen Opposition im alten Reich (Leipzig, 1932), p. 130.37. Class attributed his anti-Semitism to the influence of his teacher Heinrich

von Treitschke. "His phrase, 'the Jews are our misfortune,' became apart of my body and soul when I was twenty years old; it essentially in-fluenced my later political work." (Ibid., p. 16.)

38. Ibid., p. 17.39. Ibid., pp. 88—89.40. Under the pseudonym of Daniel Frymann, Class published in 1912 a

book, If I Were the Kaiser, of which five editions appeared until WorldWar I. In it Class expounded his anti-Semitic program which was basedon the racial theory. He called the Zionists as his star witnesses: 'fhosewho regard the Jews as belonging to a foreign race which, despite itsparticipation in all the products of our culture, did not become Germanbecause it cannot become German on account of its basic differences,must rejoice over the fact that among the Jews, themselves, the nationalmovement, called Zionism, is gaining more and more adherents. One musttake off one's hat to the Zionists; they admit openly and honestly thattheir people are a people of its own kind whose basic characteristics areimmutable and could not be destroyed by living almost two thousandyears without a state of their own and among foreigners; they also de-clare openly that a true assimilation of the Jewish foreigners to the hostnations would be impossible according to the natural law of the racewhich is stronger than superficial conformity to the circumstances offoreign surroundings. The Zionists confirm what the enemies of the Jews,the adherents of the racial theory, have always asserted; and though theymay be only a small group in relation to their entire people—the truth theypreach cannot be denied. Germans and Jewish nationalists are of oneopinion in regard to the indestructibility of the Jewish race—who thenwants to deny the Germans their right to draw the necessary politicalconclusions?" (Frymann, Daniel: Wenn ich der Kaiser wür', Leipzig, 1914,5th ed., p. 78.) The necessary conclusions are drawn in Class' programfor a solution of the Jewish question. He puts forth the following demands(Ibid., p. 76):

Jews are to be barred from all public offices.They are not to be admitted to military service in army and navy.They are not to have either active or passive franchise rights.


The professions of lawyers and teachers are to be closed to them.So is the management of theaters.

Newspapers which employ Jews must declare this fact.Other newspapers which may generally be called "German" can

neither be owned nor written by Jews.Banks which are not purely personal enterprises are not to have

Jewish directors.Rural property may, in the future, neither be owned nor mortgaged

by Jews.As a compensation for the protection which Jews as aliens enjoy,

they are to pay twice as much in taxes as the Germans.

Together with this program, Class proposed a reform of the constitu-tion. The general franchise in the Reich should be replaced by a class-franchise similar to the Prussian three-class franchise, based on the amount

of taxes paid by the citizen, but improved in so far as the educatedshould be favored. Property and Kultur should be combined to define

a new elite.Class knew very well that these and similar "reforms" could only be

achieved in the course of a major political upheaval. War was the great

chance. If Germany was victorious, the execution of his plans would be

facilitated and if the war was lost, the prospects appeared equally good.

Internal dissension and chaos would bring about a call for a dictator.

From as early as 1914 he was engaged, in his own words, "in awaiting

the Führer."After World War I, a new edition of his book appeared. His reform

plans, he conceded, had been insufficient. But he placed his hopes on a

dictator who, "blessed with the greatest force of soul and mind," would

arise to lead the German people. "He will enforce the reform of the Reich

and he will build the völkisch-German state headed by a new Kaiser." (Cf.

Jung, Dietrich: Der Alldeutsche Verband, Inaugural Dissertation, Würz-

burg, 1936, p. 18.)The new Kaiser was Adolf Hitler. The Pan-German League was one of

the few organizations that was not dissolved when the Nazis came to

power. Justizrat Class and Geheimrat Alfred Hugenberg, whom Class calls

the father of the Pan-German League, were appointed by Hider tohonorary membership in the German Reichstag.

41. George N. Shuster and Arnold Bergstraesser (Germany, A Short History,

New York, 1944), call the Pan-Germans "narrow-minded and chauvinistic

political amateurs" and believe that the League "remained for decades with-

out much influence on political action" (p. 108).Mildred S. Wertheimer in her fine study The Pan-German League 1890—

1914 (New York, 1924) comes to the conclusion that "the Kaiser had no

connection with the League, and except as a symbol of the monarchic

principle, in which it firmly believed, the League had no regard for the

Kaiser. Nor did the League have any connection with the German govern-

ment. No documentary proof has come to light that the government ever

• 248 NOTES AND REFERENCES

made use of the League, except as it used any political agency whichsupported its policies. . . . There was no such thing as a great 'Pan-German plot" (pp. 215—216).

Hans Delbrück wrote in 1911: "The Pan-Germans are, it is true, avery active but completely powerless sect" (Preussische Jahrbücher,1911, p. 338). He changed his opinion two years later and at thattime considered the League a greater menace to the future of the GermanReich than the Social Democrats or the Catholic Center.

Franz Neumann (Behemoth, The- Structure and Practice of NationalSocialism, 2nd ed., New York, 1944) stresses the League's "extraordinarypropaganda apparatus" and invests the Pan-Germans generally with greatpolitical importance. They were in his opinion the propagandists of bigindustrial interests, "whatever may have been the motives of the othermembers of the League." This point of view neglects the mittelständiachecomposition of the League and the great number of intellectuals amongits members, facts which Neumann is inclined to regard as "not very reveal-ing" (pp. 206—207).

Some German and foreign observers attributed a power to the Leaguewhich it clearly did not possess. Thus the French writer Paul Vergnet:"It is, in fact, easily proved that the Pan-Germans, apart from someexaggerations in their speeches and demands, received, in the last analysis,everything they asked for from the people, the Reichstag and the imperialgovernment." (Quoted from Alldeutsche Blätter, April 12, 1913, p. 114.)

During the first World War the German Socialist Kurt Eisner wrotethat for a quarter of a century the Pan-Germans exerted a decisive in-fluence on the course of German foreign policy. "They have in the courseof time achieved more than all the political parties and all the parlia-mentary groups of Germany taken together." (Treibende Krafte, Berlin,1915.)

The Democratic Reichstag member Conrad Hausmann (Geheimberichtno. 7, of February 1917, Die Innenpotitik Deutschlands al.s Instrumentder Aussenpolitik Frankreichs) goes even further: "The history of thediplomacy of the last years before the war is, as far as Germany is con-cerned, nothing else but a permanent capitulation of the leaders in foreignaffairs to the demands of the Pan-Germans."

The soundest evaluation of the League seems to be Eckhart Kehr's, whocalled the League "a sort of political-ideological holding company whichfurnished 'spiritual' weapons for the other propaganda outfits—the ColonialSociety, the Naval Society, and later, the Association for Defense (Wehr-verein) ." (Kehr, Eckhart: "Grundlagen der Tirpitzschen Flottenpropa-ganda," Die Gesellschaf-t, vol. II, 1928, p. 225.)

42. Werner, Lothar: Op. cit., p. 71.43. Bachem, Karl: Op. cit., vol. VI, p. 181.44. See, for instance, Hohenlohe's diaries of March 2, 1898: "All kinds of

rumors and intrigues are current again. Holstein and Marschall [both in theForeign Office] accuse [Prussian Minister] Köller of trying to play the lead-


ing role in the Cabinet, while Köller complains that Marschall carries on ahostile campaign against him in the National- and Kölnische Zeitung.Köller says that he asked the gentlemen of the National Liberal Party,among them Marquardsen, why they worked against him and the latteranswered that the initiative did not come from the editors but fromhigher circles. Marschall, in Köller's opinion, works against him throughLevysohn of the [Berliner] Tageblatt. I told this to Marschall who wantsto have it out with Köller and [Prussian Minister] Miquel, too. The latterhas put Köller on Marschall's tra1. Marschall says that Miquel has alwaysdone this kind of thing and used the press to work against Caprivi."(Denkwurdigkeiten der Reich.skanzlerzeit, bc. cit., p. 49.)

45. These thoughts were systematically developed in Naumann's book Demo-

kratie und Kaisertum (1900).46. Naumann's best-known book, Mitteleuropa, was published during World

War I (1915). It envisaged an economic empire, dominated by Germany,that would include the whole of Central Europe and secure the materialresources for Germany's expanding industry.

47. Quoted from Gothein, Georg: Waruin Verboren Wir den KriegP (Stuttgartand Berlin, 1920) p. 41.

48. Pascal, Roy: The Growth of Modern Germany (London, 1946), p. 75.49. From the Franco-German war of 1870 to the First World War, Imperial

Germany enjoyed four decades of peace. With regard to anti-Semitismthis period may be divided into two parts of almost equal length. Politicalanti-Semitism was rampant from 1875 to 1895. After the mid—nineties it

lost its momentum and vehemence.The spans of growth and decline of German political anti-Semitism

coincide with periocli of economic depression and recovery. The period1873 through 1894 was one of stagnation, including fifteen years of eco-

nomic depression and only six years of recovery. During the years 1895—

1918, German capitalism experienced, but for two short recesses in1901—02 and 1908—09, continuous advance in business activity, accumula-

tion of wealth, high employment, and enormous technological progress.

In contrast to the preceding two decades, this was a period of great pros-perity. The same coincidence of "high-low" occurred in the WeimarRepublic. The years of greatest economic disintegration, 1919—23 and

1930—32, were years of flourishing political anti-Semitism. In the period of.

recovery, 1924—28, the anti-Semitic wave receded.This concurrence of economic depression and increase of hostility to

Jews in Germany should not hastily be interpreted to mean that theimmediate causes of modem German anti-Semitism were economic. In

order that resentment and aggression released by economic hardships turnto a specific target, the target must be present in the minds of the embit-tered. Only because anti-Semitism already had had a place in the politicaland cultural life of the nation, was it bound to be intensified with everyintensification of socio-economic conflicts. Only in this restricted sense is

the concurrence of economic depression and rising anti-Semitism mean-

ingful.

CHAPTER X

1. For a detailed history of labor's political separation from liberalism seeMayer, Gustav: Die Trennung der proletarischen von der burgerlichenDemokratie in Deutschland 1863—1870 (Leipzig, 1911).

2. The Socialists recognized this dilemma of the German middle classes.Few of them, however, saw as clearly as the Russian anarchist Bakuninthe portent the liberal compromise with Bismarck held for the future ofGermany and Europe. At the threshold of Germany's national unffica-tion, Bakunin wrote:

Like doctor Faustus, these excellent [liberal] patriots pursued twogoals, two contradictory tendencies: a mighty national unity andliberty. As they wanted to reconcile two irreconcilable elements, fora long time they hampered the realization of one by insisting on theother until finally, warned by experience, they decided to give up onein order to achieve the other. And thus they are now about to erecttheir great Prusso-Germanic Empire, not upon the rubble of freedom—they never were free—but upon the ruins of their liberal dreams.By their own will they will build from now on a terrible state anda nation of slaves. (Michael Bakunin: Gesammelte Werke, Berlin,1921, 2 vols., vol. I., pp. 69—70.)

Bakunin has often been called a fanatical hater of everything German.Such a judgment needs qualification. His passionate outbursts against the"Knouto-Germanic" regime were directed against the ruthless ambition ofPrussian-German nationalism and against the servility of the Germanmiddle classes. He saw no signs of a truly anti-authoritarian spark in theGerman bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it was in his opinion the willingtool of nationalism and imperialism. "Scarcely five years have passed," hewrote shortly before Bismarck imited Germany, "since Prussia was lookedupon as the last among the five big powers of Europe. Today she wantsto become the first and she undoubtedly will become the first. And woe,then, to the independence and freedom of Europe! Particularly woe to thesmall states which have the misfortune to possess Germanic or formerlyGermanic people, as for instance the Flemish. The appetite of the Germanbourgeois is as big as his submissiveness is monstrous, and relying uponthis patriotic appetite and this wholesale German servility Herr von Bis-marek . . . might very well be tempted to undertake for his master therealization of the dreams of Charles V." (Ibid., pp. 56—57.)

3. Mehring, Franz: Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, 4 vols., 11thed. (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1921), vol. III, p. 30.

250


4. The literature on Lassalle's extraordinary life is large; outstanding is thebiography of the historian Hermann Oncken: Lassalle, eine politischeBiographic 1st ed. (Stuttgart, 1904).

5. Lassalle, Ferdinand: Off enes Antwortschreiben an das Central-Gomité zurBerufung eines Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeitercongresses zu Leipzig(Zurich, 1863).

6. As early as 1847, Marx and Engels had advised the revolutionary workersas to the position they should take in the fight between the liberal middleclasses and the bureaucratic government. "[The proletariat] asks whetherthe present . . . rule of bureaucracy, or the rule of the bourgeoisie whichthe liberals are seeking, will furnish it with more opportimities to realize itsown aims. One only has to compare the political position of the proletariatin England, France and America with that in Germany in order to see thatthe rule of the bourgeoisie not only gives to the proletariat entirely newpossibilities for fighting the bourgeoisie but also an entirely new position,the position of a recognized party." (Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung, no. 78,September 12, 1847.)

To this statement Marx and Engels referred in 1865 when they refusedany cooperation with the Socialdemokrat, the Lassalleans' paper, in whichLassalle's successor, Schweitzer, had just published a series of articlesglorifying Prussianism and its skillful servant Bismarck. They had expected,they wrote, that the Socialdemokrat "would use at least as bold a languagein the criticism of the cabinet and the feudal-absolutistic party [of theConservatives] as of the liberals." (Quoted from Bebel, August: Ausmeinem Leben, 3 vols., Stuttgart, 1919, vol. II, p. 21.)

7. The controversy over Lassalle's negotiations with Bismarck kept Germanlabor in a high state of excitement for decades. Marx and Engels saw inthe relations between the two men proof of Lassalle's treason. "Slowly butsurely, our brave Lassalle discloses himself as a downright scoundrel (ganzkommuner Schuft) . . . Subjectively, his vanity might have made the affairplausible to him; objectively it was a dastardly trick, a sellout of the wholelabor movement to the Prussians," wrote Engels in 1865, after Lassalle'sdeath. (Letter to Marx, January 27, 1865. Brief wechsel zwischen Marxund Engels, Gesamt-ausgabe, III, 8, Berlin, 1930, p. 219.)

Only in 1928 were Lassalle's letters to Bismarck published. (Mayer,Gustav: Bismarck und Lassalle, ihr Brie fwechsel und ihre Gesprache,Berlin.) They proved that Lassalle indeed had envisaged the possibilityof a pact between the monarchy and the workers.

8. "Das neueste Zerwürfnis des Liberalismus über die soziale Frage," His-torisch-Politische Blätter für das katlwlische Deutschland (1863), 2nd vol.,pp. 56 if.

9. Schweitzer, J. B. von.: Lucinde oder Kapital und Arbeit. Em sozial-po!itisches Zeitgemalde aus der Gegenwart, 8 vols. (Frankfurt a.M., 1863).

10. Mayer, Gustav: Johann Baptist von Schweitzer und die Sozialdemokratie(Jena, 1909), p. 89. In Mayer's opinion Schweitzer caricatured the Jews

252 NOTES AD REFERENCES

"only in the style of the Fliegende Blatter," a popular weekly, "not in thegrim anti-Semitic way later for a while made fashionable in the Lassalleanparty by Hasselmann," editor of the Lassallean paper, Socialdemokrat,and admirer of Bismarck.

In 1880 Hasselmann was expelled from the Social Democratic Party.He shared with Johann Most, who was expelled at the same time, a violenthatred of the middle class and a disdain for intellectuals who as theoreti-cians, editors, writers, and speakers exerted a strong influence on the younglabor movement. Particularly noticeable was the resentment which theoverpowering intellect and knowledge of Marx evoked, not only in self-taught men like Hasselmann and Most. This antipathy against intellec-tuals was unmistakably associated with anti-Semitism. It seems as if theadherents of "direct action," of a philosophy of power, viewed Jews inthe labor movement as influences making for caution, negotiation, Ver-burgerlichung, and betrayal. The anarchists, Michael Bakunin and EugenDuhring, were passionate haters of Jews.

The opponents of socialist labor frequently aired their anger aboutthe prominent part intellectuals had in the leadership of the Social Demo-cratic Party. Such attacks usually had an anti-Jewish slant. Stoecker, forinstance, attacked the Social Democrats for sailing under the colors of aworkers' party while really being led by "journalists and Jews," andcalled upon a supporting witness who shared his contempt for the liberalbourgeoisie. In a Reichstag debate, turning to the Social Democraticdeputies, he exclaimed: "I challenge your claim to be representatives ofthe workers. . . . You always act as though all it takes to be a spokesmanof labor is to put the label 'friend of labor' on one's back ye lookedup the Reichstag register and taken notice of your occupation. Well,what are you really? Four of you are genuine workers, eight are journalists,six are employers. You [claim to be the] spokesmen of labor? Lassalleonce said: 'There are two things I hate, journalists and Jews. Unfor-tunately, I am both.' This has remained so with you. Whether you aretoday still saying 'unfortunately' I do not know. But a party which has'institutionalized' such a state of affairs—to use a fashionable term—sucha party is certainly not a labor party." (Quoted from Oertzen: Op. cit.,p. 251.)

11. The Marxist organization, the Sozialciemokratische Arbeiterpartei, wasfounded in 1869, at a congress in the Thuringian city of Eisenach. Untilthe Lassallean "General Workingmen's Association" and the Marxist "So-cial Democratic Workers' Party" were fused at Gotha (1875), the Marx-ists were commonly referred to as the Eisenachers.

12. Leopold Sonnemann, a prominent South German democrat, founder andlater owner of the Frankfurter Zeitung, was anxious to prevent the separa-tion of the workers' associations from the liberal movement. Until 1869,when the Marxists founded their own party, he was a leading figure inthese associations and on friendly terms with Marxist leaders, particularlyAugust Bebel. After the congress of Eisenach which Sonriemann still at-


tended as a delegate, he parted company with the Eisenachers. "The classcharacter of the party repelled him," Bebel states. (Bebel, August: Ausmeinem Leben, joe. cit., vol. II, p. 91.)

To the Lassalleans, however, Soirnemann was an arch-representative ofmoneyed liberalism. In contrast to Bebel's friendly appraisal of Sonne-mann's work, Frank Mehring, who never missed an opportunity to cometo the defense of Lassalleanism, had only scorn for his role in the workers'associations. (See, for instance, Mehring: Geschichte, bc. cit., vol. III,pp. 14, 70, etc.) In his appraisal of Schweitzer's novel Lucinde Mehringwrites that "a few types, drawn from life, are very well done, like theliberal banker Itzinger for whom Sonnemann stood as model (Mehr-

ing: Op. cit., vol. III, p. 86.)13. Mayer, Gustav: Schweitzer, bc. cit., p. 31.14. Meyer, Rudolph: Der Emancipationskampf des Vierten Stander, bc. cit.,

vol. I, p. 217.15. Marx's Zur Jndenf rage grew out of a review of his friend Bruno Bauer's

pamphlet, Die Judenfrage (Braunschweig, 1843).At the same time, the Christian and Jewish religions had been attacked

by another leading philosopher of the young-Hegelian school, LudwigFeuerbach. Feuerbach saw in the Jewish religion the religion of egoismwhich was indifferent to anything but the individual's personal gain andtherefore fundamentally irreligious. Every emancipation of the Jews wasin his opinion condemned to be superficial and futile as long as the Jewsthemselves were not free of a belief that set the individual against society

and prevented his identification with the general good.16. Translated from the German.17. Aus dem literariechen Nach1a.s von Karl Marx, Friedrich En gels und Fer-

dinand Lassalle, ed. by Franz Mehring (Stuttgart, 1902).18. Franz Mehring: "Kapitalistische Agonie," Nene Zeit (1891—1892), vol. X,

no. 2, p. 548.19. One could speculate whether this did not, in Marx's mind, constitute a

specific responsibility of the Jews.20. It is noteworthy that Marx, after having settled his account with the

Jewish question at the age of 23, never came back to it. In his personalwritings to intimate friends, biting anti-Jewish remarks may be found,especially in his letter to Engels concerning Lassalle. He liked to air hisirritation over political and theoretical disagreements with Lassalle ininvectives often used by Gentiles and Western Jews to express their dis-

pleasure with alleged or real cultural characteristics of Eastern European

Jews.Those who are interested in Marx's persona! relations to Jewry will

find an excellently documented and balanced study in Solomon F. Bloom's

"Karl Marx and the Jews," Jewish Social Studies, vol. IV, no. i, pp. 3—16.Of German Social Democratic writers, Franz Mehring did most to bring

Zur Judenfrage to the attention of the Socialists. (Franz Mehring: KarlMarx, Geschichte seines Lebens. 4th ed., Leipzig, 1923, pp. 71—78;


Geschichte der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie, vol. I, pp. 169—177; and hisintroduction to the reprint of Zur Judenf rage in the Nachiass-Ausgabe.)

Wilhelm Liebknecht's attempt to attribute the bitterness of Marx's essayto an early childhood experience is not convincing. Writes Liebknecht:"Shortly after the birth of the boy an edict was issued leaving all the Jewsno other choice but to be baptized or to forego all official positions andactivity. The father of Karl Marx, a prominent Jewish lawyer and notarypublic at the county court, submitted to the inevitable and with his familyadopted the Christian faith. Twenty years later, when the boy had grownto be a man, he gave the first reply to this act of violence in his pamphleton the Hebrew question and his whole life was a reply and was the re-venge." (Liebknecht, Wilhelm: Karl Marx, Biographical Menwirs, Chicago,1906, pp. 13—14.)

Bloom points out that long before the father's conversion "the house-hold had ceased to be significantly Jewish" (op. cit., p. 5). On the otherhand, Bloom is inclined to see in Marx's often displayed contempt for themiddleman "a diminished echo of the not-too-distant age when com-merce was socially disreputable and even disgraceful." He cautiously sug-gests that Marx may on such occasions have spoken "in a measure for theold agrarian, Christian and aristocratic society" (ibid. p. 16).

The young Marx was certainly influenced by the romanticists. But canone really believe that the author of The German Ideologj was partial tothe values of agrarian, Christian, aristocratic society? The term Schacheris often loosely used in Marx's and Engels' writings to characterize the es-sence of capitalist society, not only the function of commercial capitaland of the middleman. Their attack upon the new forms of productionand distribution did not stem from a predilection for the old ones. Theideologists of the liberal order claimed that it would free man forever.Marx and Engels made this claim the object of their critique.

21. Address and Provisional Rules of the Working Men's International Asso-ciation, in Karl Marx, Selected Works, ed. by V. Adoratsky, 2 vols. (Lon-don, 1942), vol. II, p. 443.

22. August Bebel, in his report on "The Social Democratic Party and Anti-Semitism," at the Cologne party convention of 1893. Protokoll uber dieVerhandlungen des Parteitages der Sozialdenwkratischen Partei Deutsch-lands, Köln, 22—28. Oktober 1898 (Berlin, 1893), p. 224.

23. Kautsky, Karl: "Das Massaker von Kischineff und die Judenfrage," NeueZeit, vol. XXI, no. 2, p. 307.

24. Bernstein, Eduard: "Das Schlagwort und der Antisemitismus," Neue Zeit,vol. XI, no. 2, p. 234.

25. Actually a large part of officialdom is poorly paid and in orderto keep up a prescribed standard of living (standesgemasses Auf-treten) an official may be forced to go into debt. Since he cannotgive adequate security to the legitimate loan institutions, he borrowsfrom the loan sharks who more often than not are Jews. It is easilyseen how anti-Semitism takes root in a debt-ridden officialdom.


Another contributing factor is the fear that borrowing from loansharks may be the beginning of the end for the Junker estate. HisJewish creditor may finally take it over, lock, stock and barrel.

(Bebel, August: Protokoll etc., bc. cit., pp. 286 if.)26. The decaying artisan fights against big industry and jobbers; the

little retailer against the department stores; the deeply indebtedfarmer against the loan shark and trader, especially the cattle andgrain dealer. By the decay of these economic groups their sons aredriven into a profession instead of entering their fathers' businesses,with the result that the professions get more and more swamped.All these groups attack the Jews who appear to them as the realexponents of money and commercial capitalism and who, further-more, are represented among the professions by numerous and effi-cient individuals. What better way could these groups figure out tomake an end to their distress than to eliminate the Jews?

(Kautsky, Karl: Neue Zeit, vol. XXI, no. 2, p. 304.)

Similarly, Heinrich Cunow in a review of Otto Fretherr v. Boenigk'sGrundzuge zur Judenf rage (Neue Zeit, vol. XIII, no. 1, p. 824):

The anti-Semitic movement is not a racial but an economic move-ment, accentuated by ethnic and religious divergencies. It is a reac-tion of certain lower middle-class groups, threatened in their existence,against modem big business and its money economy. As it is oftenheaded by Jews, they regard them as the essential representatives ofthe oppressive conditions. One must add to these groups part of thepeasantry, indebted to Jewish usurers, as for instance in Hesse, andpart of the salaried employees in the big cities who complain aboutbad pay and long hours in Jewish department stores....

Franz Mebring thought it "quite natural and in a way even unavoidablethat the peasant gains the first understanding of social interdependencethrough the person of the Jewish usurer, who as the executor of capitalism,drives him from home and land." (Neue Zeit, vol. XI, no. 1, p. 368.)

Bebel saw a cause-and-effect relation between the first anti-Semitic waveafter the collapse of the speculation boom in the 1870's, and the prom-inence of Jewish speculators:

Now, it is indisputable that the Jews have taken an importantposition in the foreground of our economic development -after theyreceived full emancipation and our new social and economic legisla-tion . . . opened new and surprisingly successful avenues for capital-istic activities. Since among the Jews were quite a few big capitalists(bankers or directors of banks), they could be seen everywhere inthe foreground of many new business ventures which sprang intobeing during 1871 to 1874 and which often were of a highly dubiousquality. They controlled and still control many commercial enter-prises in the most different fields.(Bebel, August: Sozialdemokratie und Antisemiti.srnus. Rede aufdem sozialdemokratischen Parteitage in KöIn, Berlin 1906, pp. 12 if.


This is a revised and supplemented version of Bebel's speech at theparty convention of 1898.)

27. Kautsky, Karl: "Das Judentum," Neue Zeit, vol. VIII, pp. 27—28. The ideais further developed in Kautsky's book Judentum und Rasse, 2nd ed.(Stuttgart, 1921), translated into English under the tifle Are the Jews aRace? (New York, 1926). The American author Lewis Browne has usedthe same concept in his novelistic treatment of anti-Semitism.

28. "Anti-Semitism is by nature reactionary because it wants to abolish generalcivil equality before the law by depriving Jewish citizens of this equality,although Jews do nothing else but what civic law and civil institutionsenable and permit them to do." (Die Sozialdemokratie im DeutschenReichstag. Tatigkeitsberichte und Wahlaufrufe arts den Jahren 1871—1893. Berlin, 1909, pp. 515ff.)

Occasionally, however, socialist writers, too, would refer to unfair Jew-ish business practices, trickery, and cunning as irritants for which therewas no longer any excuse. They diagnosed such lack of business ethicsas a survival of habits commonly found in precapitalist modes of exchangeand, in the case of the Jews, favored by the oppressed conditions of theirexistence. But such anachronistic vestiges were unsuited to the technicaland psychological requirements of modern business, and, therefore, boundgradually to disappear. Bernstein, for instance, found it unconvincing toargue that shortcomings attributed to Jews could also be found amongnon-Jews. ". . . it does not refute the fact that certain unpleasant char-acteristics may indeed be encountered more often in Jews than non-Jews,although not to the extent the anti-Semites claim this to be true." (Bern-stein, Eduard: "Das Schlagwort und der Aritisemitismus," Neue Zeit, vol.XI, no. 2, p. 286.)

29. Kautsky pointed out that Russia, unlike Western Europe, did not have an"overproduction of intelligentsia but an underproduction." This might bethe reason why "in Russia a woman student in a university is not metwith hostility by the masters of the intelligentsia as a competitor butwelcomed as a friend and comrade. In Western Europe, the same groupsof the intelligentsia which are most anti-Semitic, are also the most narrow-minded opponents of higher education for women." (Kautsky, Karl: "DasMassaker von Kischineff und die Judenfrage," Neue Zeit, vol. XXI, no. 2,pp. 805ff.)

80. In tracing the history of this opinion, one finds a good many RussianJewish Socialists as its active propagandists.

81. There was, however, at least from the nineties on, no socialist consensus of

opinion as to what bearing such assimilation would have on anti-Semitism.The idea that in the further course of capitalist development the class strug-gle would supersede the struggle against the Jewish group was not shared

by a group within the Social Democratic Party which began to questionthe tenets of orthodox Marxism. The "revisionists," led by Eduard Bern-stein, were inclined to doubt that the Jewish group could hope to placate


its enemies by dissolving into the various economic classes of capitalism.On the contrary, Berustein foresaw a further deterioration in Jewish-Christian relations, due to the narrowing opportunities for the occupationalgroups into which Jews were forced to move. Capitalist society could nolonger be expected to provide a solution. "In view of the violent competi-tion which today dominates all spheres of economic life," Bernstein wrote,"the Jews cannot choose any occupation without provoking the anti-Semites. The emancipation of the Jews happened at a time when bour-geois society still believed in its unlimited possibilities. It can only becompleted in a new society." (Eduard Bernstein in 1894, reviewing C.Lombroso's "Der Antisemjtjsmus imd die Juden im Lichte der modernenWissenschaft," Neue Zeit, vol. XII, no. 2, p.407.)

82. Kautsky, Karl: "Das Massaker von Kischineif," etc., bc. cit., p. 807.33. Bebel, August: Protokoll, etc., bc. cit., pp. 236 if.34. Kautsky, Karl: "Das Massaker von Kischineif," etc., bc. cit., p. 807.35. Bahr, Hermann: Der Antisemitismus, bc. cit., pp. 28 if.36. Mommsen's answer to Treitschke's Em Wort über unser Judentum was

polemically entitled: Asich em Wort über unser Judentum (Berlin, 1880).87. Despite Mommsen's strong feelng about the futility of all appeals to

reason, he suggested an international declaration of protest issued by out-standing men of good will.

38. Vorwdrts, April 11, 1893.39. Mehring, Franz: "Kapitalistische Agonie," Neuc Zeit, vol. X, no. 2, pp.

545 if.40. Bebel, August: Sozialdemokratie und Antisemitismus, 2nd ed. (Berlin,

1906), p. 38.A survey of popular Social Democratic periodicals might yield interest-

ing findings on the possibility that the socialist fight against liberal "phio-Semitism" disseminated anti-Jewish stereotypes among workers. Liberalperiodicals like Kladderadatsch and Simpbicissimus definitely contributedto the dissemination of anti-Semitic caricatures. See Fuchs, Eduard: DieJuden in der Karikatur (Munich, 1921).

41. Reviewing the first election that took place under the conditions of theanti-Socialist bill, the Social Democratic Party stated:

Only after the bill against the Social Democratic Party had beenpassed did the scandalous nuisance of the anti-Semites become pos-sible. That it did not grow into a general persecution of the Jewsis the merit solely of the Social Democratic Party which warned theworkers not to get involved in this shameful movement which had itsroots in the meanest motives . . . To sum up: only the era of theSozialisten-Gesetz produced the excesses of the Stoecker clique.

(Die Sozialdenwkratie im Deutschen Reichstag. Tatigkeitsberichte undWahlaufrufe aus den Jahren 1871 —1 893. Berlin, 1909, p. 209.)

CHAPTER XI

1. "The endeavors of Stoecker and Adolph Wagner as well as the furiousarticles of the 'Staatssozialist' against the 'Roman concepts of property andlaw' left no doubt that Herr Bismarck's government was not at all con-cerned with suppressing socialism, the cause of so many headaches forHerr Bamberger, but that it simply intended to deprive the socialist labormovement of its democratic character and to make use of it to intimidatethe liberal bourgeoisie." (Auer, Ignaz: Nach Zehn Jahren, bc. cit., pp.80—81.)

2. In his memoirs August Bebel (Aus meinem Leben, bc. cit., vol. II, p. 396)writes about the period:

"In those days, [Johann] Most, with all the passion of his temperament,had begun to agitate for leaving the church. The public meetings he calledwere overcrowded and feverishly tense. The excitement grew when thenewly founded Christian Social Party, led by the Court Chaplain Stoecker,also started to hold meetings and sent their speakers into Most's meetingswhere, as was to be foreseen, they came off second best to the delight ofthe audiences. This agitation created enormous excitement among thenation's pious. . . . Even the old Kaiser . . . thought it necessary to warnthat religion must be saved for the people. (Die Religion muss dem Volkeerhalten bleiben.)"

See also Bernstein, Eduard: Geschichte der Berliner Arbeiterbewegung,bc. cit., vol. I, pp. 350 if. Mehring critically views Most's agitation asa windfall for Stoecker and attributes the small number of workers wholeft the church to their indifference toward religion. (Mehring, Franz:Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie, bc. cit., vol. IV, p. 132.)

3. Bernstein, Eduard: Geschichte der Berliner Arbeiterbewegung, bc. cit.,vol. II, p. 60.

4. Bernstein reports (ibid., vol. II, pp. 164ff.):"[In government circles] the hope was nourished that a conffict might

yet develop between the workers' trade union movement and the SocialDemocratic leadership. Every incident was welcomed that seemed prom-ising in this respect. But each time the pleasure proved short-lived.Whenever a union leader gave an indication that he was tempted tocooperate politically with those anti-Semitic procurers (Zutreiber) of thegovernment who called themselves Christian Social, he was called to orderby the rank and file and had no other choice but to retract or lose allinfluence. This is what happened in 1884 to the leader of the carpenters'organization, Gustav Rödel. Unquestionably gifted and a popular speaker,

258


it seemed for a moment that he might win the fight against the combinedunion leaders. But once he started to use the anti-Semites' terminologyand went into cahoots with the [anti-Semitic] 'Staatsburgerzeitung,' hewas a dead man."

5. Norddeutsche Aligemeine Zeitung, November 12, 1881.6. Volkszeitung (Berlin), November 19, 1881.7. The Jahrbuch für Sozialwissenschaft (Zurich, 1879), financed and edited

by the wealthy Jewish Socialist Karl Hochberg, succeeded the bi-monthly,Die Zukunft, which the government had suppressed in 1878. Die Zukunft(not to be confused with Maximilian Harden's later publication) hadbeen the first scientific journal of Social Democracy. During the thirteenmonths of its existence (October, 1877—November, 1878) the bi-monthlyhad tried to further the cause of socialism by appealing to all men of goodwill not to stand in the way of reason and justice. It had been under con-stant attack by the Marxists.

The passages of the Jahrbuch referred to appeared in a summary on"the socialist movement in Germany" and read (quoted from Kautsky,Karl: Introduction to the General-Register of the Neue Zeit, Stuttgart,1905, p. V.):

Fortunately, it cannot be denied any longer that in Germany, too,socialist ideas are asserting themselves in the circles of the educatedand well-to-do. All the students who have read or listened toDtihring, Schäffle, Adolph Wagner, have become infected by thesocialist "poison." The appearance of the clergymen Stoecker andTodt, even the attitude of Prince Bismarck toward men of such firmsocialist, although not Social Democratic, convictions as GeheimratWagener and Lothar Bucher, makes it evident that the new truth isirresistibly capturing German minds.

8. Speech of September 11, 1883. Quoted from Bernstein, Eduard: Geschichteder Berliner Arbeiterbewegung, bc. cit., vol. II, p. 116.

9. Ibid., vol. II, p. 137.10. Frank, Walter: Op. cit., pp. 79—80.11. Mehring, Franz: "Knechtseliges," Neue Zeit, vol. XIV, no. 2, p. 227.12. A moderate wing, with strong support within the Social Democratic

Reichstag group, had been steadily working for a course of action whichwould help the party to break "the iron ring" which, while it supported,also isolated the organization. Especially after the Imperial Message of1881, inaugurating the government's program of social reform, "parlia-mentarianism," and "Lassalleanism" gained ground in the organization, tothe disgust and dismay of the orthodox Marxists who saw the monster ofthe Lassallean "social kingdom" under Hohenzollern-Junker dominationraise its head again.

13. "During the whole period of the Sozialisten-Gesetz we made sure to pre-vent any general secret organization, covering all Germany, from beingbuilt up. We were convinced that such an organization would be unearthed

zóo NOTES AND REFERENCES

very quickly and lead to general persecution of the worst kind." (Bebel,August: Au meinem Leben, bc. cit., vol. III, p. 137.)

14. Quoted from Mayer, Gustav: Friedrich Engels, 2 vols. (Haag, 1984),vol. II, pp. 849 if.

15. See, for instance, Engels' letter to F. A. Sorge of April 12, 1890: "Sincethe official friendship for labor goes together with the desire for militarydictatorship (you see how all present-day government becomes Bonapartistnolens volens) we must see to it that [the government] does not get achance [to set up a dictatorship] ." (Quoted from Mayer, Gustav: FriedrichEngels, II, p. 498).

16. In 1879 Engels had sharply criticized the account which the Social Demo-cratic Reichstag group had just rendered to the Social Democratic voters.The report, in Engels' opinion, had made "unpleasant concessions to theGerman philistine"; had quite unnecessarily bowed to "public opinionwhich in Germany will always be that of the beer-drinking simpleton";and had "completely blurred the class character of the movement." (Letterto Bebel, November 14, 1879. Quoted from Bebel, August: Aus meinemLeben, bc. cit., vol. III, pp. 71—72.)

Bebel defended the report; he pointed out that the party, while havingno illusions about the nature of "public opinion," nevertheless could notignore the fact that other groups but workers had cast their vote for it."We had in mind also the petty bourgeois and peasants who in the lastfew years have joined us. in greater numbers and who in the last elections[the first elections under the anti-Socialist act] have in many a districtsaved the honor of the party (Letter to Engels, November 18, 1879,ibid., p. 77.)

Engels replied:"That petty bourgeois and peasants are joining the movement is cer-

tainly a symptom of the rapid progress it is making but also a danger ifone forgets that these people have to join and do so only because theycan't help it. Their joining is proof that the proletariat really has becomethe leading class. But since they bring along the ideas and wishes of pettybourgeois and peasants, it should not be forgotten that the proletariatwould throw away its leading historic role were it to make any concessionsto such ideas and wishes." (Letter to Bebel, November 24, ibid., p. 81.)

17. Engels had a concrete concept of the revolutionary strategy which thehistorical situation demanded. In March, 1893, at the time of Caprivi'sarmy reorganization bill, he published a series of articles in the Vorwdrtsentitled: "Kann Europa abrüsten?" Couched in cautious language, thearticles contained the outlines of a master plan for the coming revolition.The plan was based on the premise that a new economic crisis was nearwhich would engulf all of Europe; and that, as a result, the precariouspeace of Europe would come to an end. In order not to be caught help-less in an unwanted European war, the Social Democrats should endeavorto prevent it or to assure that, if it came about, it would end in the defeatof German semifeudalisu. The opportunity to act, in Engels' opinion, was

NOTES AND REFERENCES 26!

given by the fight for the reduction of the period of military service, anissue of great concern to millions of Germans. Germany should proposeto France that both nations simultaneously shorten the training periodof their standing armies. If France agreed, peace was secured. If she re-fused, Germany would not only fight with world opinion on her side, thewar would also put her in a position to rid herself of the Hohenzollernregime and to establish the democratic republic which the revolution of1848 had failed to bring about.

Engels' reasoning is comprehensible only if we remember certain axiomsof his thinking. A national war, he was convinced, would not supersedethe class war. On the contrary, the war could be fought as a national oneonly by a shift of power at home. As early as 1864, during the constitu-tional conflict, he had criticized the Liberals for their refusal to grant thebudget for the reorganization of the army which the government had re-quested. They should have given more, not less, than what was askedfor, he argued, and insisted on the introduction of universal military con-scription, which would transform the army from a tool of crown andconservatism into an instrument of the people which could not be usedany more for antidemocratic designs. In 1893, this same idea was behindhis suggestion to reduce the term of military service. If accepted, it wouldmean a larger army with a stronger element of antifeudal officers. If not,the preparation for war and the war itself would force German "semi-feudalism" to create a modern military organization, to arm "the people."The necessities of modern warfare would wrest from the old groups themilitary monopoly, the chief weapon with which they defended theirprivileges. The economic depression which he predicted for the end ofthe century would bring the national war but also create the sociopoliticalconditions for establishing the democratic republic, which Engels con-sidered a necessary phase of the socialist revolution. Finally, a victoriousGerman democracy should of its own volition return Alsace-Lorraine toFrance, thus cementing friendly relations between the German and Frenchworking classes.

18. Handhuch der Sozialdemokratischen Parteitage von 1863 his 1909, ed. byWilhelm Schröder (Mtinchen, 1909), p. 540.

19. The distinctive feature of 'revisionism" is its opposition to orthodox Marx-ism rather than a consistent theory and program of action of its own. The"revisionists" questioned the validity of basic elements in Marx's philo-sophic and economic system, from the philosophy of dialectic materialismto the theory of class struggle and proletarian revolution. Germany's pros-perity after the middle of the nineties favored the growth of "revisionism"which aimed at a policy of adjusting labor's struggle to the new economicconditions. Prosperity would gradually make for class cdoperation. Cartelsand trusts, the organizations of capital, in cooperation with the tradeunions, would be able to bring some order into the chaos of the capitalistmarket, thereby decreasing international political tensions as well as thechances of business slumps. Future depressions could be softened, if not

z6z NOTES AND REFERENCES

entirely prevented. The idea of labor's emancipatory mission was dropped.Instead "revisionism" tended to emphasize labor's stake in the state, inindustrial expansion, active colonial policy, and Germany's world powerpolitics.

"Revisionism" attracted followers of various conviction and tempera-ment, pacifists and "social imperialists," democrats and nationalists. Someof its adherents clearly realized the dangers which Social Democracy in-curred by a sterile radical phraseology and an unimaginative policy ofopposition. It would be wrong, therefore, to look upon "revisionism" onjyas a force aiming at the liquidation of the revolutionary aspirations oflabor. In its attempts to enlarge the class basis of the Social DemocraticParty by winning over Mitteistand groups, some "revisionists" revealedmore political insight into the specific nature of Germany's social con-flicts than the radicals. How consistently the latter were deceived as tothe real political developments may be seen from their arguments againstthe "revisionists." Rudolf Hilferding, an outstanding member of the or-thodox Marxists, thought in 1912 that "revisionism" within the party hadbeen decisively beaten. Commenting on the eclectic nature of "revisionism"as a theory and program he wrote: "It is doomed before it can even bedefined. The events of the last years illustrate how it is falling apart."(Neue Zeit, vol. XXX, no. 2, p. 1003.) Less than two years later the SocialDemocratic Party voted for the imperial government's war credits.

20. The socialist contribution to the sociological and political theory of anti-Semitism was made during the few years when racial anti-Semitism wasat its height. The Neue Zeit, founded in 1883, did not publish a seriousanalysis either of the anti-Semitic movement or the situation of the GermanJews until 1890, but devoted in the following five years more than thirtyarticles to these topics.

21. The Austrian Socialist Heinrich Braun, editor of the Archiv für sozialeGesetzgebung und Statistik, himself a Jew, was known in the party as anindependent mind. He stood on the side of the revisionists against Marxistorthodoxy, leaning even toward the state-socialism of the "Katheder-socialists." But he, too, shared the opinion that the anti-Semitic movementwas a trail-blazer for Social Democracy. In 1898 he evaluated the anti-Semitic movement as follows ("Zur Lage der deutschen Sozialdemokratie,"Archiv für sozidle Gesetzgebung und Statistik, 1893, pp. 513—514.)

Its rapid growth is not unlike that of Social Democracy. . . . Therecan be little doubt that we have to deal in anti-Semitism with astrong social movement and that a radical anticapitalistic tendencyof a general nature is ever more clearly and consciously trying toassert itself, along with the attacks upon Jewry. Thereby, however,anti-Semitism is moving toward Social Democracy. Chancellor Ca-privi rightly called it the seed of Social Democracy. In this respectanti-Semitism represents social trends which are all the more sig-nificant as it succeeds through a brutal and stupid agitation inreaching and shaking out of their lethargy groups of the population


which are not yet mature enough for Social Democratic propaganda.The sociopolitical job which anti-Semitism is doing today in over-coming the century-old idiocy of the peasants; in creating passionatecommotion in this most indolent stratum of the population; in propa-gandizing the small artisans, the petty officialdom, and other groupsnot easily accessible to the Social Democracy—this job can, in theperspective of a revolutionary development of society, hardly beoverestimated. It is very likely that anti-Semitism, by the law ofsocial gravitation, one might say, will be attracted into the greaterand more powerful Social Democratic movement.

22. Protokoll uber die Verhandlungen des Parteitages des SozialdemokratischenPartei, Halle 1890 (Berlin, 1890), p. 48.

23. Bebel was one of the reporters assigned to speak on the topic. When hismotion to postpone the discussion "in consideration of the advanced hourand many pending matters" was carried, he expressed his satisfaction butalso stated that "in order to meet the wishes of those who want to havea thorough report on the subject matter, Liebknecht and I have decidedto take it up in popular meetings which we will call in the nearestfuture, here in Berlin, and to have our speeches stenographically recordedand printed to get them before the public at large." Protokoll über dieVerhandlungen des Parteitages des Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutsch-lands, Berlin, 14.—21. November 1892 (Berlin 1892), pp. 248—9 and293—4.

24. Engels, Friedrich: "Die Bauernfrage in Frankreich und Deutschland,"Neue Zeit, vol. XIII, no. 1, pp. 292—306.

In an aside on the revisionist aberrations of the Parti Ouvrier, theFrench Marxists who in Marseilles (1892) and Nantes (1894) hadadopted a reformist agrarian program, Engels commented: "Had theFrench a noisy anti-Semitic demagogy as we have, they'd have hardlycommitted the mistake of Nantes." The implication seems clear. Engelsinterpreted political anti-Semitism in Germany as a symptom indicatingthat the same group of small property owners whom the French Socialistswere trying to win over by promises which they could not honor, wasalready in full economic and ideological disintegration.

25. Protokoll uber die Verhandlungen des Parteitages der SozialdemokratischenPartei Deutschlands, Köln, 22.—28. Oktober 1893 (Berlin, 1893), p. 228.

26. Ibid., p. 224. The resolution was formulated and presented by Bebel.27. Vorwärts, November 4, 1893.28. When Germania, the Catholic daily, indignantly took issue with Ahlwardt

for an article in which he had lumped together princes, Junkers, clerics(Pfaffen), and the bourgeoisie, "liberally sprinkled with Hebrews," asthe ruling groups whose pretended concern for the masses was "purehypocrisy and fraud," the Vorwärts remarked: "Our readers know whatwe think of Ahlwardt. But we grant him that he has made progress sincehis 'Jewish Rifles' affair." (Vorwärts, July 4, 1894.)

29. Quoted from Vorwärts, December 22, 1894. The Vorwärts report notes


that the audience greeted with "enthusiastic bravos" Ahlwardt's demandsfor unlimited credit for [non-Jewish] trade and handicraft, and for theappointment for life of civil servants, but that the suggested nationaliza-tion was strongly opposed from the floor.

30. Quoted from Vorw'ärts, May 13, 1894.31. Bahr, Hermann: Der Antisemitismus, bc. cit., p. 25.

In the same year the Vorwärts (June 26, 1893), dealing with the resultsof the nm-off elections which brought the anti-Semites their main suc-cesses, wrote:

Capitalism is sinking into barbarism and wants to drag mankindwith it. It has found its most worthy representatives in the anti-Semites. The best illustration of capitalist culture is the fact that theConservative and National Liberal parties have endorsed anti-Semitism. It is only logical that within the bourgeois camp the anti-Semites have taken the leadership in the battle of capitalism againstSocialism. Soon the renmants of the National Liberal and Conserva-tive parties will have been absorbed by anti-Semitism which, togetherwith police-socialism, its twin brother, represents the last phase ofthe dying capitalist society.

Go right ahead! Fortunate that the process of putrification anddecomposition is so swift. Anti-Semitism itself must further it. Bar-barous as it is, it is a bearer of culture against its will—culturalmanure for socialism in the truest sense of the word. Let us, there-fore, rejoice over the successes of anti-Semitism, a heavy blow forall other capitalist parties, almost as much as we do over our own.

CHAPTER XII

1. Mebring, Franz: Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie, 2nd ed. (Bremen,1878), P. 7. This critical history of Social Democracy is not to be con-founded with Mehring's later work, Geschichte der deutschen Sozial-demokratie, 2 vols., (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1897—98) which to this day hasremained the best-known single work on the history of German socialistlabor in the nineteenth century. The hostile version was written inMehring's "black period," as his adversaries in the Social Democracy latercalled the years of his life during which he was an opponent of the partyand attacked it in several publications. His second Geschichte was pub-lished by the party's publishing house, thereby receiving the stamp ofofficial approval. Nevertheless, there was strong disagreement in the partywith Mehring's way of presenting controversial issues, particularly withhis outspoken bias for the Lassalleans. In Bebel's memoirs Aus meinemLeben one finds so many implicit refutations of Mehring's Geschichtethat one must infer them to have been written with the intention of cor-recting Mehring in mind.

2. Mehring, Franz: Herr Heinrich von Treitschke, der Sozialistentoter (1875).8. Quoted from Kautsky, Karl: "Franz Mehring," Neue Zeit, vol. XXII, no 1,

p. 108.4. Mehring, Franz: Kapital und Presse. Em Nachspiel zum Fall Lindau

(Berlin, 1891), p. 110.5. This early controversy with liberalism—Jewish liberalism in this case—

sounds the keynote of Mehring's later fight against what he consideredthe basic weakness of all liberalism: political, social, and cultural irre-sponsibility.

6. Mehring, Franz: Herr Hofprediger Stoecker der Sozialpolitiker (Bremen,1882).

7. See Kautsky, Karl: "Franz Mehring," Neue Zeit, vol. XXII, no. 1, p. 98.The party's central organ, the Sozialdemokrat, which during the Sozial-

istengesetz had to be published in Switzerland, praised the Berliner Voiks-zeitung under Mehring as "a fearless publication" which spoke out againstBismarckian reaction "in a manner no bourgeois paper has risked fordecades." (Sozialdemokrat, March 21, 1899. Quoted from Mehring's Kapi-tat und Presse, toe. cit., pp. 65—66.)

8. The details of the controversy are of no particular interest today. Lindauand his friends dis]iked and systematically ruined the career of an actresswhom Mehring considered a victim of the Lindau clique.

9. Mehring quit when one of his co-editors, Georg Ledebour, who had taken265

z66 NOTES AND REFERENCES

his side in the controversy, was fired. Ledebour also joined the SocialDemocratic Party, was from 1900 to 1918 a Reichstag member, and duringWorld War I, as one of the leaders of the party's left wing, organized theoppositional Independent Social Democratic Party. He took an active partin the revolution of 1918. After the left wing of the Independents hadmerged in 1920 with the Communists and the right wing in 1922 withthe Social Democrats, he tried to build a radical organization independentof the Social Democrats and Communists but failed. In 1947, 92 yearsold, he died as a refugee in Switzerland.

10. Mehring, Franz: Kapital und Presse, bc. cit., p. 64.11. Mehring, Franz: "Anti-und Philosemitisches," Neue Zeit, vol. IX, no. 2,

p. 587.12. Mehring, Franz: "Kapitalistische Agonie," Neue Zeit, vol. X, no. 2, pp.

545—6.13. Buschhoff, a Jewish butcher at Xanten (Lower Rhine) had been charged

with the murder of a five-year old child. The anti-Semites tried to trumpup the case as a ritual murder. Although acquitted by the courts, thetrial ruined Buschhoff financially; a group of liberals came to his rescueby taking up a public collection for him.

14. In the case of Bleichröder versus Ahlwardt, Mehring wrote: "The roughpamphlets of the anti-Semitic Rektor Ahlwardt about the 'Aryan Peoples'Battle of Despair against Jewry' contain, after all, not a few small grainsof salt for capitalism. Especially the fact that a Jewish big capitalist com-mitted perjury in order to avoid paying alimony to a dismissed maitresseand that some police officers assisted him in his dirty private affair ofgetting rid of the inconvenient witness, has been verified to such a highdegree of probability that it is not quite comprehensible why there is noofficial investigation of the evidence which, after all, is a little disparagingfor the 'God-fearing Empire of piety." (Neue Zeit, July 27, 1890, p. 585.)

On the occasion of Ahlwardt's "Jewish Rifles" attack upon the companyof Ludwig Lowe, Mehring commented that decent people would of courseturn with disgust from the "slanderous nonsense" about German armyequipment having been deliberately spoiled by Jewry in order to secureGermany's defeat in the next war. But the conclusion seemed to himinescapable "that these or those military jobholders who were chargedwith conducting the negotiations with the firm Lowe had upheld theircurved palms [accepted bribes]." (Neue Zeit, vol. X, no. 2, p. 324.)

Mehring's History of the German Social Democracy contains commentslike these: "During the 'swindle period' moneyed Jewry had put on airswhich inevitably had made it the center of unpleasant attention; in Berlinparticularly, Judaization (Vermauschebung) of public life had reachedsuch proportions as to make even the most intrepid admirers of the wiseNathan feel ill at ease." (Geschichte, bc. cit., vol. IV, p. 96.) After thefinancial crash of 1873, Manchester liberalism tried to defend the swindleswith arguments which convinced no one, Mehring states. "Least of allwas the 'socialism of the dolt' disarmed by an artificially bred philo-


Semitism which was not more intelligent but still more disgusting thanthe peasants' and artisans' indigenous (naturwuchsig) Jew-hatred." (Ibid.,p. 98, see also vol. III, pp. 276, 358, etc.)

15. Bernstein, Eduard: "Das Schlagwort und der Antisemitismus," Neue Zeit,vol. XI, no. 2, pp. 228—237.

It is significant that it was Bernstein who cautioned the Social Demo-cratic Party against ambiguity of language and attitude in the Jewishquestion. His protest anticipated the disagreement with the "orthodox"interpretation of Marxism which, a few years later, he systematized in hisbook Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozial-demokratie (1899). Although at the time of his writing (1893) he stillshared the party's official viewpoint of anti-Semitism as "the intermediarylink that is being put between socialism and the reactionary parties—seemingly as a dam against the former, in reality as an approach to it"(ibid., p. 234), the coming theoretician of "revisionism" was even thenat variance with the "radical" leadership on basic questions of capitalisticdevelopment and socialist strategy.

Bernstein had joined the Eisenachers in 1872 and had during theyears of the anti-Socialist act edited the party's paper, the Sozialdemokratin Zurich. What line the paper under his editorship had pursued is ex-cellently summarized by no other than Mehring.

"It was then [under the Sozialistengesetzl no longer of primary impor-tance to imbue the harassed, oppressed and persecuted workers with thepassion to fight, and to use a revolutionary language commensurate to thefury of reactionary persecution. It became more important to spoil theschemes of official social demagogy, to educate the party about the socio-economic forces in society and state, to put in their proper light misleadingcatchwords, such as 'fighting against Manchesterism,' a slogan which oncehad made sense and might again become meaningful [sici but which inthose years threatened to bring the German working class into a shadyalliance with the shadiest elements of the ruling system of exploitation.None of these problems could with sufficient candor be discussed in theGerman labor papers without their falling under the ax of the Sozial-istengesetz. Thus the Sozialdemokrat in a series of illuminating articlestore to shreds the fairy-tale of the social kingdom, the empty jugglingof Stoecker and [Adolph] Wagner, the stupid notion that each act of'nationalization' was a step toward socialism. It showed that at the timewhen the state was in the hands of the worst enemies of labor, the eco-nomic task of the Social Democracy could not be to increase the state'sinfluence, to enlarge the area of its power but only to further and protectthe proletarian class interests. Under the given conditions the class-conscious proletariat had to direct its efforts toward conquering [more]political power and political rights." (Mebring, Franz: Geschichte derdeutschen Sozialdemoki'atie, vol. IV, p. 226.)

Bernstein's anti-authoritarian (and, therefore, also anti-Lassallean) con-victions were strengthened by the economic and political observations he

Iz68 NOTES AND REFERENCES

made during the many years which he spent in Western Europe. FewGerman Social Democrats were as conscious as he of the political andpsychological consequences it might have for the labor movement whenit insisted on bringing about socialism single-handed, against the opposi-tion of all other social groups.

16. Neue Zeit, vol. XI, no. 1, p. 363.17. Neue Zeit, vol. XI, no. 2, p. 548.

CHAPTER XIII

1. The history of Social Democracy has been widely discussed and is stillfar from being clarified. The reader is forewarned that our selection ofevidence and interpretation leaves ample scope for controversy.

2. After the elections of 1903 Eduard Bernstein had suggested that theSocial Democratic Party should claim the right to nominate the vice-president of the Reichstag. Socialist participation in government had be-come a practical problem since 1899 when the French Socialist DeputyAlexandre Millerand joined the cabinet of Waldeck-Rousseau as minister ofcommerce.

3. Protokoll der Verhandlungen des Parteitages der SozialdemokratischenPartei Deutschland.s, abgehalten zu Dresden, September 13—20, 1903(Berlin 1903), p. 418.

The revisionists, incidentally, supported the resolution. Their stand mayhave been dictated by tactical reasons, so as not to disclose their numericalweakness. Perhaps it expressed a cynical awareness that the future courseof the party would not be determined by radical pronunciamentos andthat the majority was more concerned with upholding the radical ideologythan pressing for a radical course of action.

4. Luxemburg, Rosa: "Geknickte Hoffnungen," Neue Zeit, vol. XXII, no. 1,p. 37.

5. The orthodox Marxists in order to refute evidence that seemed to contra-dict their theory of capitalist development spent much ingenuity on analyz-ing the less obvious changes in social stratification. With regard to thefate of the lower middle classes Kautsky (Introduction to Karl Marx'sRevolution und Contre-Revolution in Deutschland, Stuttgart, 1896, p.XXIV) argued thus against the revisionists:

Statistics may sometimes prove that these small enterprises inindustry, trade and agriculture do not decrease in number but itwill not succeed in proving that the petty bourgeoisie and the peas-antly are not going down, that the insecurity and misery of theirexistence are not constantly growing. And on top of it, there is thestrong increase of the 'liberal professions' which has already led toa numerous and rapidly growing 'intellectual proletariat.'

6. Bamberger, Ludwig: Wandlungen und Wanderungen in der Sozialpolitik(Berlin, 1898), p. 18.

7. Kautsky, Karl: "Der Kongress von Köln," Neue Zeit, vol. XXIII, no. 2,p. 314.

269


8. A year later (1906) the problem of the mass strike was once more puton the agenda of the national convention, much against the will of theparty leadership. It was forced upon it by the publication of the contentsof a secret discussion between trade union leaders and members of theparty's executive board, in which party leaders had agreed with unionleaders that a general strike was out of the question since it would end incertain defeat. Again, the party convention did not on principle rule outa general strike as a legitimate defense of labor but resolved by a greatmajority to make such a strike dependent on the agreement of the tradeunions—which had condemned it a year ago! The party's desire for main-taining the organization was no less impelling than that of the unions.

9. Called to task by the national Social Democratic convention, the unitedSouth German delegates declared the national convention not authorizedto decide in this matter which, in their opinion, came under the jurisdictionof the various Social Democratic state organizations. The party leadershipdid not force the issue.

10. A Social Democratic coalition with the most parliamentary of all Germanparties, the Catholic Center, did not materialize, partly on account ofideological conflicts, partly on account of the Catholic Center Party's rolein the era of imperialism.

11. The total Social Democratic vote remained stable but the parliamentaryseats were lost in the run-off elections where the Social Democraticcandidates faced a united opposition from the anti-Semites to the Progres-sives.

12. Internationaler Sozialistenkongress zu Stuttgart, August 18—24, 1907 (Ber-lin, 1907), p. 88.

18. Kautsky, Karl: "Der Essener Parteitag," Neuc Zeit, vol. XXV, no. 2, p. 856.14. Gustav Noske became in the Weimar Republic the first Minister of the

Reichswehr which he helped to organize. He took an eminent part in thesuppression of the revolutionary left, making use of illegal organizations ofarmed officers and soldiers, the notorious Free-Corps.

15. Parteitag zu Essen (Berlin, 1907), p. 258.Kurt Eisner, of Jewish descent, became Prime Minister of the first

Bavarian Socialist Republic in 1918 and was murdered in 1919. Upon hisdeath the ill-fated Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed.

16. Bebel, August: Sozialdemokratie und Antisemitismus, bc. cit., p. 38. Ouritalics.

17. Scheidemann, Philipp: "Wandilungen des Antisemitismus," Neue Zeit, vol.XXIV, no. 2, p. 632.

18. Bebel's statement did much to help the rulers of Germany bring aboutthe solid front with which the nation went into the First World War.When, in the crucial July days of 1914, Albert Ballin asked the Chancellorv. Bethmann-Hollweg, "Why such haste to declare war on Russia?" Beth-mann answered: "If I don't we sha'n't get the Socialists to fight." SeeMemoirs of Prince von Bubow, 4 vols. (Boston, 1931—1932), vol. III,p. 187.

NOTES AND REFERENCES 27 I

19. In an article on "Poalei-Zionismus," Neue Zeit (vol. XXIV, no. 1, pp.804 if.) attacked the new Zionist currents in the Jewish socialist movementof Russia. Bankrupt political Zionism, the article maintained, was forcedto make concessions to the revolutionary tendencies within Jewish laborand the Jewish petty bourgeoisie which had come under revolutionaryinfluence. "The revolutionary tinge of the Zionist Socialists stems from theRussian movement for freedom. Once absolutism is gone and persecutionof the Jews has ended and the freedom movement has reached its aim,Poalei-Zionism will lose its basis and sink hopelessly into the sea ofoblivion."

The criticisms of Zionism which appeared in German Marxist literatureseem to have come chiefly from Russian socialist circles. For the GermanSocial Democrats the whole issue was of minor interest, and was dealtwith in a detached and dogmatic manner. There were no sharper criticsof Zionism than Jewish Marxists. See J. Stem's review of Theodor Herzl'sJudenstaat, Document No. XI.

20. Kautsky, Karl: Rasse und Judentum (Stuttgart, 1921), p. 105.21. The Sozialistische Monatshefte appeared from 1898 until Hitler's rise

to power. The monthly was not recognized by the Social DemocraticParty as an official party publication. Contributors were leading revisionists,among them Eduard Bernstein, Ignaz Auer, Georg Voilmar. The founderand editor was the Zionist Josef Bloch.

Bloch's Zionism was part of his theory of modem imperialism whichbrought him and his disciples into conflict with British policies on theEuropean continent and made them look to France as the leader of aEuropean Continental Empire, including North Africa. During the WeimarRepublic, Bloch's friends agitated for a rapprochement with France and"continental policy," opposed to England's interference.

22. Anin, Maxim: "1st die Assimilation der Juden moglich?" SozialistischeMonatshefte, 1908, vol. II. May—August, pp. 614—619.

23. Bauer, Otto: Die Nationalitatenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (Vienna,1907).

24. An article like Karl Leuthner's "Junker und Juden" (Sozialistische Monats-hefte, 1908, vol. II, pp. 912—22) which questioned the radicals' premiseof a steadily advancing political maturity of the masses, may serve as anillustration. To prove his point, Leuthner chose the phenomena ofliberal hatred of the Junkers in Prussia, and of anti-Semitic hatred inVienna. In both instances, the popularity of the negative stereotypesseemed to him rooted in their psychological service of satisfying a deep-seated desire to hate. The search for subjective, evil motivations replacedthe analysis of objective factors and social forces. The persistence of suchstereotypes cast doubt on the progress of political rationality whichMarxism claimed to have brought about among the people. Leuthner sawthe great attraction of anti-Semitism in the gratifications to be gainedfrom hatred, in the self-satisfaction to be derived from indignation.

25. Hannah Ahrendt's thoughtful study on the Dreyfus Affair deals with the


moral devastation brought about by, and revealed in, its course. Frenchsocialist labor, Ahrendt shows, did not keep free of guilt. (Ahrendt,Hannah: "From the Dreyfus Affair to France Today," in Essays on Anti-Semitism, ed. by Koppel S. Pinson, New York, 1946; first publishedin Jewish Social Studies, New York, July 1942.)

26. The significance of prevailing economic concepts for the status of theJewish group is excellently analyzed by Louis B. Boudin: "Recent Develop-ments in Economic Theory and the Resurgence of anti-Semitism," ORTEconomic Revue (New York), June and September 1947, March 1948.

27. Michels, Robert: "Die deutsche Sozialdemokratie, deren Parteimitglied-schaft und soziale Zusammensetzung," Archiv für soziale Gesetzgebungund Statistik (1906), pp. 471—566.

Michels mentions as the only case of overt anti-Semitism that he foundin Social Democratic publications a booklet written by Richard Calwer,editor of a provincial party newspaper, the Braunschweiger Volksfreund("Das Kommunistische Manifest und die heutige Sozialdemokratie,"Braunschweig, 1894). Calwer deplored the intrusion of a "petty-bourgeoisradicalism" into the party which in his opinion was "fed and incited by afew Jews who make slander their business" (p. 18). He criticized theparty literature for going so far in combatting anti-Semitism as to createan impression "that we were phio-Semites" and to give the party's op-ponents the opportunity to call the Social Democracy "durch und durchver/udet" (p. 89).

Caiwer stood at the extreme right of the party. On the role of this"social-imperialistic" wing of revisionism see Neumann, Franz: Behe-moth, bc. cit., p. 212.

28. In 1906 Robert Michels in his analysis of the membership and socialcomposition of the Social Democratic Party (bc. cit.) mentioned asprominent Jewish members in the field:

1. of social theory: Eduard Bernstein, Adolf Braun, Jakob Stern,Simon Katzenstein, Bruno Schonlank;

2. of journalism: Georg Gradnauer, Kurt Eisner, Josef Bloch;3. of party organization: the expert in municipal administration Hugo

Heimann; the specialist for electoral law Leo Arons; the organizer ofyouth Ludwig Frank.

The list could be continued. Important contributions in economic theoryand political analysis were made by Rosa Luxemburg, Rudolf Hilferding,Heinrich Braun, Parvus-Helphand.

In 1912, 12 of the 100 Social Democratic Reichstag members were ofJewish descent. They were Eduard Bernstein, Oscar Cohn, Georg David-sohn, Ludwig Frank, Georg Gradnauer, Hugo Haase, Josef Herzfeld, OttoLandsberg, Gustav Hoch, Arthur Stadthagen, Georges Well!, EmanuelWurm. Three of these, Cohn, Davidsohn, and Haase, professed Jewishreligion. (According to the Reichstagshandbuch, 13. Legislaturperiode,edited by the Office of the Reichstag, Berlin, 1912.)

The total number of Jewish Social Democrats cannot be obtained. The


Social Democratic Party, for which religion was "a private alfair," neverregistered the denomination of its members; besides it must be assumedthat most Jewish intellectuals, when joining the Social Democratic Party,formally or informally severed their association with the Jewish communityand declared themselves konfessionslos, conforming to the party's code inthe matter of religion.

29. Liebknecht, Wilhelm: tJber den Kölner Parteltag (Bielefeld, 1893), p. 33.30. In Des Aufbau, (New York, Oct. 13, 1944). Max Osborn died in New

York in 1946.31. Among the most impressive testimony of the socialist workers' loyalty to

their leaders was the way they honored them in death. For decades theworkers of Breslau observed the anniversay of Lassalle's death by pro-ceeding to his grave in the cemetery of the Jewish community. The workersof Berlin made the funeral of Paul Singer in 1911 a demonstration ofwhich the Berliner Tageblatt (February 5, 1911) wrote that none of themighty of this earth could be buried as he was. The procession of mournerslasted from morning to night and even the conservative DeutscheTageszeitung spoke of a human sea that defied all standards of measure-ment.

In the early years of the Weimar Republic there were similar manifesta-tions of labor's loyalty to its dead, for instance to the murdered RosaLuxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. The funeral of the murdered WalterRathenau who, although not a Socialist, was considered an exponent of ademocratic Germany, became the occasion of a protest against the enemiesof the Republic at which more than a million people participated.

32. The underestimation of the potential violence of anti-Semitism was tiedup with the concept of the lower middle classes as anachronistic elementsin the developed industrial society, weak, unstable, and permanently at thebrink of social and economic disaster.

A discerning student of German socialism once remarked to the authorthat the attitude of the orthodox Marxists toward the "archaic" socialclasses which had largely disappeared in England, stemmed from injurednational pride. The existence of such classes was proof of Germany's"backwardness."

It would be worthwhile to study the semantics of the term Kleinburger,as used in the socialist vocabulary. We would not be surprised if itevoked associations of mental, moral, and physical qualities that addedup to the image of a natural species. Timid, servile, of small stature andgeneral meekness, the Kleinburger could never be suspected of havingthe physical energy and the determination to kill and burn.

33. It was perhaps to the moral, though not to the political credit of SocialDemocracy that it was incapable of believing its enemies would resortto crime and utter ruthlessness when the stakes were high enough. Fromthe nineties to Hitler's rise to power, the Social Democrats refused tolearn the sad lesson that all professed values, ideals, and norms by whichWestern civilization usually abides, were at crucial times withdrawn from


circulation. "I don't believe in the innocence of the French captainDreyfus. . . . The leaders of the campaign [for Dreyfusi assert that thegeneral staff had knowingly sentenced an innocent man. A simplymonstrous presumption! It could only have been to the interest of thegeneral staff to find the culprit and to bring him to justice. That theJew Dreyfus was sent to Devil's Island simply out of anti-Semitic hatred,is a presumption which clashes with all psychology and common sense.No one will suspect me of being an anti-Semite, but as high an opinionas I have of the Jew-hatred of Messrs. Liebermann von Sonnenberg,Boeckel, Ahlwardt and their ilk, I would never believe that they, as judges,would be capable of declaring a Jew guilty of a capital crime only becausehe is a Jew."

The man who wrote this indeed could not be suspected of anti-Semitism.In the Reichstag, at party conventions, at public meetings and in hiswritings, he had fought the vileness of the anti-Jewish agitation. He wasWilhelm Liebknecht. (Liebknecht, Wilhelm: "Nachtragliches zur Affaire,"Die Fackel, Vienna, April-September, 1899, end of September, pp. 1—10.)

Documents

CHAPTER VI - Welcome to AJC Archives · "1 CHAPTER VI 1. Treitschke's political development epitomized the trend of German polit-ical liberalism. Anti-Bismarckian in the constitutional